Perfect 10 . com

[JR]

When Visa and Mastercard finally stops processing adult all together, we will be lining up to thank you i am sure.

If anyone needs me this week, I will be busy with my $10,000,000.00 suit against my parents for giving me life.






http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsArticle.jhtml...73&section=news

Sex site sues credit cards over piracy
Thu 29 January, 2004 03:49

By Adam Tanner

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Internet piracy has devastated the music business, threatened the movie industry and may now undercut one of the most successful corners of the Web: pornography.

A California publisher of a pornographic magazine and Web site sued Visa, MasterCard and other financial institutions on Wednesday, alleging they facilitated the illegal sale of pirated sex images flooding the Internet.

Perfect 10, whose slogan is "The World's Most Beautiful Models Expose All", based the case on claims other Web sites were stealing their sexual imagery to make money, often through duplicitous advertising.

In a complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for Northern California, the firm sued Visa International, First Data Corp., Cardservice International, MasterCard International, Humboldt Bank and Does 1-100.

"The defendants in this case ... are knowingly providing crucial transactional support services for the sale of millions of stolen photos and film clips worth billions of dollars that belong to Perfect 10 and third-parties," the suit reads.

The complaint says these firms have made large sums from the sale of pirated erotica and thus should have a responsibility for any related copyright violation.

"Perfect 10 has concluded that the only way to stop the proliferation of such Web sites is to go to the top, namely the payment card associations and the primary third-party processor, each of which is knowingly and effectively acting as fences for the sale of billions of dollars of stolen content," the lawsuit reads.

MasterCard officials did not return calls for comment. A Visa spokesman said he was unable to find company legal experts for their response.

A LOSING PROPOSITION

The publisher of Perfect 10, Norman Zada, said in an interview that he had lost $29 million since setting up his business in 1996, including $8 million on legal fees. He said the problem was that he was spending thousands of dollars for nude photography sessions while many Internet sites were stealing his and other images.

"The reason it was so hard to make money is because while we were paying for our content, there were many Web sites out there that were competing against us that were stealing theirs," said Zada said, whose business is based in Beverly Hills. "It's pretty impossible to compete in that situation."

The problem of Internet piracy has hit the bottom lines of many businesses, with the recording industry, Hollywood and software businesses the most prominent.

"There probably isn't a lot of sympathy for people in the adult magazine business and that might be part of the problem," Zada said. "But the thieves are stealing from everybody so all the copyright holders are suffering as a group."

[Hell Puppy]

Same guys who put the squeeze on AVS's over the same issue....

[Paul Markham]

This industry has always had a very lax view towards pirates. Everyone hates them but few take effective steps to ensure they are kept to a minimum.

How many processors, hosting companies, AVSs, Sponsors asked to see licenses? In fact until approached there attitude is "WTF". Adult check were even telling Perfect 10 it was not their job to monitor the content. The judge felt different.

APIC were nearly brought to their knees by a guy who was harvesting Newsgroups and reselling the pictures, did the 3rd party processor stop processing, the host stop hosting? NO

We sell content and for a lot of people the signing and exchanging of a license to publish pictures is regarded as a chore and to be got out of if possible. The license is not for our protection, we own the pictures and can prove it in an instant. But can the buyer prove it without the license?

So now we reap what we have sown, Visa may have to ask every processor to verify that you own what they are processing money for. How many have the licenses filed?

And when Buush and Ashcroft decide to toughen up 2257, how many have the documentation?

[JR]

Visa and Mastercard have been pretty clear that they don't need adult business.

I cannot imagine any better way for one to bite the hand that feeds them than by attempting to make Visa and MC legally liable for the behavior of pornographers.

I feel pretty confident when i say that they are not going to see the industry in terms of good pornographers and bad pornographers... just in terms of risk and liability, profit and loss.

[Winetalk.com]

JR,
if Visa and MC didn't want the adult business,
they would have done what Amex and Discover had done 7 years ago and stopped processing online porn complitelly.

The fact that they are there still is fortelling.

They play the cards VERY smart and turned adult online in one of their golden goose, charging fees UNHERD of in any other industry.
Visa is not run by Catolics, but rather Lutherans.
Remember Norway?

"You can do whatever you want, as long as you pay for it"
;_))) is the explanation why liquor is so expensive there
;-)))

[Paul Markham]

Agrred they will not leave this market unless it becomes a loss maker, but they might just change the rules again.

All that meands is we wil lose afew hundred clowns who do nothing but make us look bad. The 1% was a good limit, already a few have found they cannot stick to it, more will follow. The important thing is no surfers will go.

[JR]

When i was young, i learned a very powerful lesson about biting the hand that feeds you.

Growing up fishing for Salmon every summer in Alaska taught me some funny lessons about the ignorance of people and their tendency to bite the hand that feeds them.

Salmon prices climbed all of my life from about .40 a pound for Red Salmon when i was a little boy... all the way up to about 2.80 per pound in 1988. Then it stopped. in 1989, it started to fall as the world market became flooded and farmed fish started to take a bigger and bigger share of the market.

Fishermen of course, were in a panic... "we are getting fucked" was the typical reaction. Thats a big part of the idiocy of people... they like to lay blame elsewhere to excuse their failures. Particularly their failure to remain competitive. Being mathematically challenged and more or less retarded as a general rule, they would keep making the same wrong analogies and assumptions based on flawed and wrong information to back up their point. For example, they would say "I saw Filets in the store for $3.99/pound and they are buying the fish from us for $1.00 per pound" - This of course ignores some simple math that even a child can comprehend. You cut of the head and remove the guts, you lose 30% of the body weight or so. You fillet it and remove the skin you lose another 25% or so. Processing, packaging, freezing, storage, transportation, storage again, distribution etc etc etc. It all costs money. Fishermen could never grasp that they were getting 1.00 per pound, whereas everyone else in the chain was fighting to make a nickel.

They did everything possible to convince themselves that they were victems and did little to organize, get thier shit together, market their product better, work closer with domestic buyers and processors and so on.

At the same time, less and less fish were returning. Like everything in nature, the size of the returns are cyclical in nature and are never the same. The panic escalated.

So what do they do? Accept the mathematical realities? Accept financial and market realities? Start looking at how to increase production? Start their own businesses? Start finding ways to market thier own fish themselves directly to retailers and wholesalers? Start getting creative?... haha. of course not. All of Alaska is divided into areas and you are required a special permit to fish in each area. They all just started suing eachother claiming that each area was catching fish intended for a their own area.

That accomplished nothing... so the retards got an even better idea... sue the big Japanese companies that buy all the salmon for "fucking them every year". So... they successfully sued 3-4 of the biggest Japanese fish buyers. The same buyers that bought probably about 80% or more of the salmon from Alaska. (sort of like 80% of adult CC transactions are from Visa and MC)

They won. It was a bix price fixing case.

Those same Japanese buyers said "who needs the fucking headaches with you idiots" and pulled out of Alaska, scaled back their operations and started buying more and more Norwegian and Chilean farmed fish and other farmed fish.

The salmon industry in Alaska has collapsed completely and never recovered.


------


The adult biz is a drop in the bucket for Visa and MC. They have made it clear many times that the benefits do not exactly far outweigh the negatives, costs and fraud issues.

Attempting to make them legally liable for the rampant fraudulent behavior of webmasters could easily be a deal breaker. Visa is not the problem. Liars, thieves and scumbags are the problem.

[Torone]

Jr,
For once, we agree. We've all read the 'public domain' posts; and some of those posters are very militant about theur position. I think you can also add idiots to your last sentence.

However, there is a problem with who will end up being hurt. Porn webmasters are the ones who will be the victims; but the most deserving will probably not even be touched...the people who wrote software designed to steal the content in the first place. The people who put together the P2P networks like Napster. The people who use such networks.

Integrity still lives; but in constantly-lessening quantities...



Last edited by Torone at Feb 1 2004, 07:44 AM

[Peaches]

Originally posted by JR@Feb 1 2004, 07:22 AM
Visa and Mastercard have been pretty clear that they don't need adult business.

And therein lies the problem. Visa/MC spend more time and money on customer service issue with adult than any other industry and contrary to many webmaster's theories, adult is NOT a large part of their processing $$$$.

IMHO, like AMEX, if they stop adult intenet processing, they would have to stop ALL internet processing. Considering the millions of dollars a day they do on sites like dell.com, they can't walk away from the internet. If they tried to just stop adult processing, there would be legal problems out the wazoo.

As it is, they are forcing the adult "problem" accounts to stop processing with them. It's a win/win situation for Visa/MC - they get rid of adult but don't have to worry about an anti-trust lawsuit for refusing to process it.

[Winetalk.com]

Originally posted by Peaches+Feb 1 2004, 09:29 AM-->