I'm seldom on icq - but if you'd be so kind as to provide answers here in the forum, I'd be appreciative...I'm sure a few others would be interested in hearing them as well.

My questions are rather basic and straightforward - why does CCBill outlaw processing for sites that contain material protected under the 5th Amendment and Charter of Rights - content that can easily be viewed in a large number of mainstream Hollywood movies these days (i.e. - extreme pain or violence, consumption of blood).

And why is the onus placed on webmasters to police the content of links twice removed, and how does a webmaster ascertain the content of a paysite link without paying to access the member's area?

For example - as it stands now, if I have a link to a site that unknowingly contains something in their member's area that contravenes CCBill's acceptable content, I'm still at risk of losing MY processing. Therefore, I'm left with the choice of either losing the potential affiliate revenue...or risk the possibility of CCBill pulling the plug on MY sites.

We're currently processing with Verotel, but have considered using CCBill in the past on some of our sites. But since we handle primarily bondage & fetish production (all content legal in both U.S. and Canada) and the majority of our links deal with the same subject matter - CCBill's policies give me cause for concern.

I'm fine with all of it. The hentai stuff is kinda confusing to me but it's gotta be definitely more confusuing to any Jap afficianado who's wanking his crank to it,tentacle beings and all.

:2 cents:

The double standard is puzzling - I can use my VISA card to purchase tickets to a mainstream film containing a woman being drugged/kidnapped but not to a website that contains an identical scene.

Is it the argument that the website is designed to appeal sexually which is not the intent of the film? i.e. primary intent is the issue not the actual scene. This is pretty specious as film makers include all sorts of imagery a lot of which is designed to appeal sexually - in fact the website is more 'honest' in that the intent is more open.

Also who died and made VISA or any other credit card company God? If content is illegal and I am constrained from viewing by the laws of the country I reside in then that is reasonable, albeit with some caveats I will not go into here.

But if the content is legal then what is VISA's problem? If VISA (or whoever) does not 'like' bondage and denies access then I am being censored by a private company which did not give me a list when I signed up for the card dictating what (legally) I could and could not use it for. Would you be happy to be handed such a list along with the card? Woud it not be more honest then this back door censorship?

And say the next thing could be 'we don't like black dudes banging white chicks' or 'we dont like black dudes period' or 'Indian resturants are a blight on our community so no more curries will henceforth be purchased via our cards' It has to start somewhere and banning legal content is always worrying.

A lot of people here are getting 'sniffy' about scat sites (pun intended) and 'good on CCBill etc' but wait untils its your turn and see how you feel. I do not care for scat sites but have no desire to ban people from viewing them.

I do not blame CCBill for protecting its business, its there to make money and pissing off VISA is not a good business plan. Staying ahead of the game is also sound business. My point is more about the principle of what is happening and the dangers or where this policy could lead.

We have spent a lot of time, effort and resources creating polices that we feel make us safe on a variety of fronts; legal, financial exposure, various contracts/covenants, etc...as well, it is not a secret that we are conservative in order to maintain the excellent and long-lasting relationships that we have with our upstreams

Then we have also spent a lot of time, effort and resources creating various systems, processes and procedures designed to efficiently and effectively bring the riskiest accounts to the attention of the Policy Review staff asap

It took a team of people 1 year on just the design and architecture of the Policy Review system, as well as an enormous amount of my time

Then we spend a lot of time, effort and resources constantly reviewing new accounts as well as our existing accounts.

I am going to let our record speak for itself

We feel all of our decisions come from a very reasonable standpoint, and if you do not agree, we can discuss your account on a one-off basis

So, in summary...you and the company spent an enormous amount of time on essentially - becoming subjectively conservative.

Fine.

But that doesn't answer my earlier question:

Why is the onus placed on webmasters to police the content of links twice removed, and how does a webmaster ascertain the content of a paysite link without paying to access the member's area?

it's their business, they can run it how they like. you don't have to use them. go get a merchant account.

SilentKnight, i had written the above in order to answer that portion of your question. If you had submitted an account to us and it was rejected, we can discuss it on a one-off basis.

You mentioned that you were not (currently) a client, you can call it what you want, but our clients feel comfortable that their processing structure is well-protected and reinforced.

If you have any more questions, feel free to email them over and ill get them answered, have a good night

[email protected]

no offense ccbill but this is just a legal "out" isnt it..

Basically this means ccbill can pull anyones account at any time being so open ended like that

ASACP contains several sites that would fall into the description above ( example guba.com ,pisspalace.net )

So people cant link to asacp ? or they can but legally you could cancel their account at any time you choose because the site would have violated your TOS ? .. shaky territory indeed

Rock on, CCBILL!

It's all about trust, baby.




2hp

That would be my concern as well. I don't do any hardcore on my site at all, but I do link to other webgirls. Even a link to a cam network might contain girls who do pee shows or mature couples who still have sex during that time of the month.

50 woj where are you's?

Fuck. CCBill will have to get rid of Met-Art as my site doesn't comply and I have Met-art all over it.

I bet the rules change when it's a biggy like Met-art. I don't know about you guys but CCbills affiliate site is a crock of shit to use. Sooooooooooo slow, it must have been scripted by a moron and I have a monstrously fast download connection.

Lyn from Oz

PS. I don't have that site in my sig.

Here is the simple solution if you don't like their rules then get the fuck out and dont use em simple see how many other processors ya have to use not too many that have remained above water. So whether ya like it or you don't CCBill is in the drivers seat so to speak. Just quit bitchin LOL

I like some of that perverted shit.

I like my processor to be conservative, bravo ccbill. Also bdsm is not protected speech havent you been following the supreme court turning down a case involving bdsm.

exactly right :warning

Who's winging you dick. I am dropping Met-art as they aren't converting and pissing off CCBill.

Happy now.

Lyn from Oz

Lyn the message I posted wasnt meant for you so calm down :-) dont get the panties in a bunch ( it tends to chafe after awhile )

No thanks, Mark. I don't wish to discuss things with you privately. I see no reason why the answer can't be disclosed in a public forum for everyone's benefit...unless of course non-transparency is also CCBill policy.

I am genuinely glad that your current clients "feel comfortable" with your service. :)

As long as you feel comfortable being subjectively dictated to as to who and what you can and cannot link with - enjoy your business model.

Silent Knight:

It is unfortunate that your point has seemed to escape so many responders. While it is totally understandable that CCBill, or any other processor, would want to avoid legal issues, the subjectivity involved in judging whether the content on a particular site might violate these rules makes it impossible for a webmaster to know whether you are complying with them or not.

For example, no person to person watersports is pretty easy to understand, but "extreme pain" or "extreme beating" means what, exactly? While drawing blood with a flogging is clearly a violation of these rules, what else is extreme - is reddening the skin extreme, or does it require evidence of bruising, just as an example? As you stated, barring joining the site, how can you judge the nature of the content it has?

In practice, what it appears that CCBill is saying is that every single BDSM site you want to exchange links with needs to be cleared by them first before you link to it, or you risk losing your processing with them. I guess this is why they won't directly answer the questions you asked.

The reason is because VISA, other credit card companies and merchant banks are cracking down on it. Regardless of the 'processors' limits, TOS, or restrictions.

One of my billing companies was hit by the same shit last year. Some of the sites they processed for has crushing, or some shit like that and were hit by VISA/NOVA and fined $25,000. C4S was hit by the same type of shit. Although I think it was PETA that had reported them.

Regardless, CCBill or any processor for that matter still has to deal with VISA/merchant bank restrictions on top of their own.

:disgust

Everyone has opinions as to what is morally acceptable, about freedom of speech and the like. But such opinions are totally irrelevant within a business context. In that context, CCBill creating rules is no different than a paper supplier deciding to sell only blue paper.

It is however relevant that such subjective rules, rules which are likely to evolve in application while remaining unchanged in their wording, put every single program that processes through CCB in the position that at any time it may no longer be able to accept payments.

Such vulnerability means at the very least that no-one should process solely through CCB. It is always extremely poor business to depend on any single company or individual for a key function and that is compounded in this instance because, short of not dealing with anyone except surfers, it is practically impossible to have clean hands.

It isn't just that the nature of the Internet is such that sites are linked to other sites, so that whether an unacceptable link is one hop away or ten, we all have unacceptable links if we have any links at all. The biggest problem is that the 'Net is dynamic, constantly changing and much of it is automated. Thus my links might be totally clean this morning, but by afternoon an unacceptable site may be only a couple of hops away. There is no practical way to ensure that never happens.

One would hope that CCB recognize this reality and work with their clients to resolve issues in this area. After all, it is simple enough to ask someone to remove offending links and check for compliance. But it is dangerous to assume that they will never act peremptorily.

In the wider context, we need to hope that more workable payment solutions will appear so that, like someone buying paper, we have a broader choice of suppliers. But what is under our own control is that we need to wake up to the fact that we are in business and that there is no room for cowboys. It is all very well to come over all self-righteous about issues like this, but there are thousands and thousands of sites which push boundaries far more liberal than CCB's. And they are all hooked into the mainstream because someone turns a blind eye to the future for the sake of an extra signup or a little extra traffic today.

Always amazes me how a thread such as this brings out the smug gits who are happily sitting in the 'VISA loves me and my sites so fuck you jack' and seem incapable of dealing with a valid query regarding linkage to sites and responsibility of the webmaster for said links and how it may impact on their business.

So to all the 'quit bitchin' posts - contribute something useful or fuck off to another thread :321GFY

I know of two BDSM sites that featured whipping that have lost their CCbill processing. In both cases, the most extreme content *I* saw on those sites featured vivid welts, but no blood. Oddly, there are lots of spanking and caning sites with welts just as vivid, for whom processing appears to be no problem. The loss of billing appears to be tied to the "whipping" keyword, rather than to the actual content.

In my BDSM fetish niches, I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that a site billing with CCbill is not worth promoting, because CCbill can't be trusted to continue billing even for sites it initially approved.

As for all you smug bastards, you do realize that you're next, right? The powers that be (not CCbill, but the folks to whose tune CCbill is dancing) hate *your* porn just as much as they hate fetish porn. But there are a few more of you than there are of us, so they started with us. Classic divide and conquer tactics.

Old Ben said it best: "We must all hang together, or we shall most assuredly hang separately." I'll never understand how anybody in the porn business could fail to understand that.

good for them =]

CCbill may be going a little over the top and it will require a lot of work on webmasters parts to ensure that their sites comply. But i would rather we as an industry police ourselves than have the government set up some sort of policing system for us ?

There are some big issues out there such as the .XXX TLD which is about to explode very soon....

maybe because of this??

http://www.american-cannibal.com/trailer.html

Hi, SK, you make some salient points, so I checked out your sites that you link to, and have no problem with any of them from what I can see. But I am curious; why do you use ticketsclub instead of a paid verotel account? Are the conversions the same with this free account on ticketsclub as they are on their paid version? If so, maybe other webmasters who specialize in BDSM should consider this option instead of CCBill.

It was our webhosting company that made the decision to go with the TicketsClub option instead of the Verotel lite/pro accounts. I think the reasoning was primarily the setup and recurring fees.

I couldn't tell you a comparison between Ticketsclub and the paid version since we don't go with both obviously.

Very well said...excellent points. :thumbsup :thumbsup

How can you work with someone that has made menstruation illegal?

I wonder if Ticketsclub converts better than CCBill does as I can tell you that lately CCBill's conversion ratios have been in the shitter. All you have to do is read the boards to realize this. Do you feel Ticketsclub converts? If so, as I stated previous, perhaps you are doing the correct thing by being with a more liberal biller and, to top it off, using Ticketsclub is free. Its an arm of Verotel and Verotel has a good reputation of paying its webmasters, too.

I suspect these are mostly people who are happy with the status quo because they've never been directly affected by censorship regulations handed to them.

The erosion of 'acceptable content' will continue until it affects everyone. This is not a sky is falling sentiment - just fact...based on current trends.

How long before these same people start posting similiar threads in the future complaining about having to rip down links or content because someone else told them to?

I fear the days of a wide open internet are numbered. This isn't to say CCBill is the cause, of course. But they seem to be symptomatic of the problem for those of us who aren't happy towing the corporate policy or subscribing to someone else's subjective view of how things should be.

Bingo!

A links page, any links page, is merely one link in a huge chain that encompasses the entire web. The same applies to a TGP link.

It's as simple as that.

Therefore the only sites that are in full compliance with these rules are sites that none of us have ever heard of because they are sites with zero traffic.

Yeah, they seem to convert about the same as former processors we've had in the past. We've been quite pleased with their performance so far...and as you say they seem to have a good reputation going for them.

I should point out - this thread wasn't intended solely to bash CCBill or denegrate their value as a processor. I'm sure they do a very good job for some of their clients who closely observe their TOS and abide by all their regulations.

But rather, I posted mainly to open a discussion about it all and give a heads-up to those of you (like us) who aren't able to constantly monitor 24/7 the content of every link you currently have on your sites.

I think the picture will be much clearer after the Phoenix Forum : )

I've looked at that concept before, ticketsclub, and if you study the Verotel Pro option, you don't seem to be getting all that much for the price you pay, imo.

Paying $1500 up front and $30 a month in fees for Verotel Pro to still be charged 14% on a transaction, when TicketsClub charges the same and is free, is slightly less than appealing. Verotel also charges $1250 to integrate to their API for doing PPV, while Paycom allows it for free and CCBill lets its customers use their token system for free. Verotel is great for basic membership processing, but their advanced options are not very appealing as of right now.

they are such hypocrits
 

so how come ccbill still processes for sites like "Blood Bitches"? Do they just pick and choose who they want to ban?