is it over for free avs's

Why just free AVS's? Is there something special about them I missed?

yes, i have gotten an email from the leader, its all over.

i feel like a viking at a christian gathering.

Depends on your definition of "hurt"

nothing will happen for our AVS (or however you have to call it now) ;)

I feel sorry for the people that already signed up etc..
However good news for unaffected AVS's

Holy hell, I've read this on every board I've looked at today

I'm not sure why you think it's "free" AVS's that are over? It's not about "free", it's about billing issues and being compliant with VISA. How the fees hit the webmasters will probably be the deciding factor of whether an AVS (AEN, whatever) folds, or not. If it has to be paid to every AVS, or several times per AVS because of their cascading billing, then yes- a lot of them will probably disappear. But I think all these people who are talking about moving their sites to other AVS's (I think ProAdult is the latest who is "avoiding" the fees) are wasting their time. It's a lot of work for just delaying the inevitable. When it's all said and done, everyone will bow to VISA and do what they're told or they won't process with them. There's no way any one AVS or processor (think GloBill) is going to avoid it. It might come later rather than sooner for some, but it's coming for all and it's crazy to try and build up your business by guessing which companies are going to be able to dodge it. You might as well start saving your pennies or learning how to do other things in (or out of) the world of porn. Maybe someone will invent some fabulous new payment method (since God knows it would be SO incredibly hard for VISA to come up with a verification solution to reduce cb's) that will catch on and we can tell VISA to go take a piss. But I'm not looking for that to happen in my lifetime (but if you do come up with something, let me know cause I want in on the groundfloor )

What's with all the 'avoiding the fees' stuff? There are no fees yet and no plans to introduce fees providing VISA accept the new systems (obviously yet to be seen). The only person paying $750 at this moment in time is the AVS system (or whatever you wanna call it) itself and just the once. That happened with the more general changes some time back. Fees will only happen if this attempt to work around the rules all goes to shit and then things really will be interesting.

I never said that any AVS webmaster was currently paying fees. I have sites at several AVS's so I know we're not paying. The reference to PA was because I've also read threads today referring to the same deal that we've been hearing about CA and AC- that somehow this is not going to effect them because they do their own processing which is based overseas and that VISA International isn't involved. CA also supposedly has an actual age verification procedure in place that can be fired up if and when the time comes, which would save a lot of people a shitload of work, since they wouldn't have to go back and change all their sites. I hope all that happens. I also hope to God we don't have to pay any fees. But I personally haven't seen anything that leads me to believe that the webmasters aren't going to have to pay. I know some of the AVS's are making changes so that they can continue to operate and be compliant, I'm just not convinced that part of that compliancy doesn't involve us paying the fees. I also don't think there's any point in trying to pick an AVS, or shift all your sites to an AVS, based on the fact that you think none of these changes are going to affect certain ones. And for there being "no plans to introduce fees", I'm sure that will be the case right up until 60 seconds before the emails go out telling us when and where to send the money.

The entire porn industry is chaotic right now. You have to have big balls to keep putting major chips on the table now with so much uncertainty.

I'm more concerned about the possibility of the VISA and MC saying no more adult processing entirely. That would really fuck up everything.