Michigan After Internet Billing Companies
 

From Yahoo PRNews:


Attorney General Jennifer M. Granholm today announced that her office has issued cease and desist orders to six website billing companies, demanding that they stop facilitating the promotion and distribution of child pornography over the Internet.

"BillCards," "CardBilling," "CCbill," EAN Enterprises d/b/a "LancelotSecurity," "iBill," and "Trust-Bill" were each notified that their actions in providing access to and collecting proceeds from members on behalf of "fee-based" child pornography websites constituted aiding and abetting child porn distribution, in violation of Michigan law.

Granholm said: "These Internet billing companies are greasing the wheels of the Internet's global child porn industry. Their ability to turn a blind eye toward their clients' exploitation of children is about to come to a screeching halt. These companies are acting as the keepers of the keys to child porn websites across the globe -- they're now on notice that if they choose not to take responsibility for their actions, we'll take them to criminal court."

You can read the entire press release at:

http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/020827/detu013_2.html

someone there has a hair up their ass ... :321GFY :ak47:

I doubt anything will come of that anyway. Most of these billers have compliance departments that police their sites for stuff like that. And even if they don't follow up with their sites, their policy will keep them out of legal trouble.

still, bad press = increased scrutiny on the billing companies.

And just think, because of that article right now people are doing searches looking for CP with the names of the companies mentioned.

way to go!

"....a five-month project called "Operation NO-Lita"

HAHAHAHAHAHA

Sounds like this might be an election year?

Follow up to this story - iBill killed Frankiesangels.Com:

"A livid Frank Bongiorno one of the directors of the Barely Legal series reports that his website frankiesangels.com has been turned off buy iBill which was labeled by Granholm as one of "the keepers of the keys to child porn Web sites across the globe" and would be taken to criminal court. "They turned off my site this morning without any evidence whatsoever," said Bongiorno, referring to iBill. "I have a completely legal site. I have all the 2257 paperwork in my lap right now. I'm going over all ID's and model releases. I got for that barely legal market. I have a lot of young girls on my site, but there's absolutely no children on my site." Bongiorno says he's been on the line with attorney Jeffrey Douglas who's checking his content and had just appeared on a webmaster's radio show. "I'm putting the word out there that iBill is not backing us up," he said. "They got scared- they got threatened and they just cut us off." Asked what iBill's accounting of the situation was, Bongiorno said he was told that iBill was under investigation for promoting the sale of child pornography [Granholm said she believes this is the first time law enforcement has gone after these types of Internet billers]. "They said because of that they turned off our billing," Bongiorno added. "They literally make billions off the adult industry every year and after all the money we make for them they turn us off without any evidence. Just because the attorney general threatened their merchant accounts."

:GFYBand

do you have a link to this story?

please?

Granholm is very scary. The scariest thing is that this bitch is running for Governor of Michigan and is probably going to win. :-(

She is accusing websites with out any facts or info.
What will be next from her if she can bend billing companies so easyly to kill perfectly legal sites.
I feel there will be a big rebuttle from this.
I know that there are billing companies that will fight it.
It sounds illligal

One last thing.

Ibill will always run. I mean will they kill everyones account because this women wants them to. So now Ibill works for the atorney general of Michigan.

I feel that this witch hunt once it starts can hit anyone she has a bone about
Did not the supreme court say that anything shot that is over 18 is no CP.

I'm a bit disappointed in the GYF group right now..... What they've done is begun to target ANYONE without any proof of wrong doing.

ANYONE - That means ALL OF YOU. It doesn't matter if your own your own website, your a webmaster, or if your pushing someone else's program - If you've put a picture on line they can come after you.

And not just after you...... They think they can target the Credit Card Processing companies as well. If all of the listed CC processing companies get shut down over this, well, a lot of people will be out of business.

Why isn't anyone paying attention to this?

agreed. this is huge. i know frank b. - he has always been an incredibly honest, hard working and ethical guy. (for those of you who don't know, he directs many of the hustler 'barely legal' videos)

I she she's running for Governor.....

http://www.granholmforgov.com/

Surprise!

The story is here:

http://www.stunningcurves.com/article.php?sid=1896

She's running for governor and she's beating the Lt. Governor in the polls. As of yesterday, Granholm was up over 13 points! She has made many comments over her years as Attorney General about her opinions on online porn and also online gambling. If she wins it will definitely hurt this industry.

wow, a baseless "cp" witch hunt right before an election to win votes! SUPRISING

If Ibill really killed his site without any proof, the adult industry should hold them accountable. I don't know any of the facts about this case, but so far it sounds fucked.

I thought Frank was in California? What does that have to do with some candidate in Michigan?

For those of you in California, this is a great reason that you should not vote for Bill Simon this fall. Simon is the most right wing anti porn idiot ever. Davis may not be great, but he's not as right wing as idiotic Simon.

Crazy stuff

Should be interesting to follow the outcome on this. You can bet the governments eyes are closely watching the mentioned billing companies and the sites they process for.

Any billers not listed on that list?

Here is what this will probably all boil down to. I have a high risk merchant account and MUST submit my sites for approval to my merchant bank.

This has been discussed in other threads, but I personally think that instead of submitting the sites to the bank for them to decide, they will all eventually have to be approved by visa and mastercard and will have to follow extremely tight regulations, etc.
So, in other words 3rd party billers will have to show your sites to visa and MC before you will be able to process cc's on any level.

That could be very bad news.

just my :2 cents:

One would assume that a billing company as big as IBill would understand the importance of this sort of thing, and act accordingly.

IF a billing company is going to cave in at the least sign of trouble, especially IF there is nothing illegal going on, then that is a sign that perhaps you don't want your money in their hands.

IF a billing company cannot afford to fight something like this, AND they DO operate within the law, then is it someone that you would trust with your money?

The basics, as I see it, keep in mind that this is just what I have come up with from the news (which is almost always wrong) and the things that have been posted is this:

1. If you had a woman who wants to win an election
2. in a country where there are a lot of child abduction, abuse, etc cases in certain parts of this country
3. can garner votes by doing this
4. and doesn't care about the outcome -- could do something like this for publicity KNOWING there is no case, but ONLY needs to make it an issue UNTIL the election
5. and threatens CRIMINAL prosecution of a company
6. MIGHT scare someone into caving in EVEN IF they are not violating federal laws
7. and ARE NOT technically doing business in the state that has sent out these cease and desists.

What we could see from this is possibly:
1. companies that do have their 2256/2257 statements in order
2. have models performing sex acts that look young
3. and don't have the money to defend themselves (and believe me this could take a LOT of money)
4. being shut down illegally.

In which case they should sue their billing companies on the advice of their attorneys for restriction of trade, breach of contract and whatever else their specific attorneys recommend.


Of course this is conjecture, but it opens up an ugly situation if the billing companies simply cave in without attempting to protect their business, their clients and their industry.

Who's next? Texas don't like homos, so they c&d on gay porn in their state?

Alabama doesn't allow sex outside of marriage so they c&d on swinger sites for their state?

Mississippi frowns on sodomy so they c&d on anal, oral for their state?

Law is as much about precedent as anything and it's often painful and expensive to set a precedent, especially at a federal level. To the best of my limited knowledge there is no precedent regarding jurisdiction at the moment, and there are several strong cases unrelated to the internet, including sales tax on trans-shipped goods that would seem to uphold the fact that internet purveyors are not liable across state lines for certain types of situations in the criminal codes or civil statutes.

Of course a grand jury is always convened in secret and then the warrants are served after the fact, so that is something to consider if you own a billing company as well.

Why name them all? Why not pick some that might have real violations and then the two largest?

kimmykim,

Laws aside, isn't quite possible that visa and mastercard could simply implement certain policies that would make it extremely difficult for adult sites to exist? Aren't they the ones to worry about?

puremeds,

I hate to break this to you but MC and Visa are not the only ones to worry about :(

While they have the ability to immediately redact merchant accounts almost without giving reason, there are still laws in the US that have to be considered.

The easiest thing to do in this country is bring legal action against someone -- it takes pretty much nothing in the case of a municipality or state government since they already have the manpower to do it, they don't need to hire attorneys.

It's not about who's right and wrong it's about who can afford to hold out the longest some times

First you make processing & running legit site's so expensive that only a few site's can afford to do it.

Then you have successfully regulated the adult industry. Its much easier to keep tabs on 50 companies than 5,000. And that is essentially what all of this is meant to do. It has nothing to do with child porn in my mind, and everything to do with regulation.

The anti-gun lobbyist did the same thing...first you start by showing the terrors of assault rifles...then you work your way into hand guns...then you make all the safety precautions & background checks, pretty soon owning a gun becomes a long process & gun sales drop by 50%.

The fact is....elections are near & they are just looking for ways to grab the votes.

We all know CCBILL & IBILL do not tolerate cp at any level.

Another good article just posted on AVnonline

http://www.avnonline.com/issues/2002...802_lead.shtml

there is only one way to get these political fucks to shut the fuck up and that is to EXPOSE them create a site funded by the adult industry with photos of them fucking proof of them joining the nastiest shit online and watch and see how fast they will shut the fuck up

Its time to expose them and make them SUFFER they are into shit most people here would throw up on

Time to make an example of a few

thanks for the link. this is utter bullshit. Frank's site is 100% legit. this really could happen to anyone if ibill will roll over with no resistance.

Gee, why does this post hit home? :)

A few of you around here know my story . . . we ran our own amateur swinger's site - pictures of us and sometimes it involved others.

A pretty lengthy article discussing our case written by David Wasserman can be found here:
http://www.theadultwebmaster.com/art...erman_01.phtml

A religious group in Oklahoma - most famous for forcing a Tulsa or Oklahoma City radio station to stop carrying Howard Stern - targeted our website. After a year of pressure they finally convinced a district attorney to file criminal charges against us for distributing obscene materials in Oklahoma. We live in Texas. We're not underage, and had nothing other than "normal" sex on our website . . . ok, well we had threesomes and such but you know what I mean. I think the Okies interpretation of threesome involves a brother, a sister, and a sheep. So perhaps they just got confused.

To make a long story shorter, David Wasserman was our attorney and the case dragged on for over a year. When it became clear that it was going to actualy go to trial, we finally caved, shut down our site, and agreed to the judge's order that we would no longer operate.

It would have made a great test case, however we weren't willing to put that much of our lives at risk.

bump

And that sums it up -- the problem is simple -- with civil matters he who can hold out the longest almost always wins, and the plaintiff stands about an 8% chance or so of winning a case brought to trial.

In criminal court it's a bit different -- all the sudden someone from the company is in need of bail money, their name is being dragged thru the mud, you name it.

It's normally alot more expensive to work on a criminal case and in one that sets precedent it could drag on for years -- the state or the fed is the one that brings a criminal case to court so you, as a taxpayer, are literally funding both the prosecution and the defense.

With nothing to base a case on, it's very hard to determine which way lower courts and district appeals courts will rule --

now in this case if our girl huffing and puffing didnt win the governors race -- or even if she does -- its not so much a big deal since all she needs is to get the wheels turning while she's running for election. Most all election promises tend to disappear anyway after the election, leaving alot of disillusioned people behind, no matter what party the candidate hails from --

I just can't stress how important this could be -- criminal prosecution of a third party for something that is not illegal, if the frankiesangels.com situation is indicative of what is being done.

msnbc's spin, now that they've picked up the story:

http://www.msnbc.com/local/WDIV/A1302986.asp

presented as a more-or-less open and shut case.

Well...from a military perspective, the Attorney General, did well. Divide and conquer.

shit

We need a webmasters union.
Together we stand and devided we fall.
I mean its going to be a long road ahead if the far right takes control of the adult internet business.

Why should Visa and Mastercard say what is legal and whats not.
They should stand nuetral and run there business by the US laws that we already have.
We already have laws for this.
They do not tell 7 Eleven what to sell. Or your friendly neighborhood liquor store what to sell. Well at least not yet.

This Chick up in Michigan went to far and ya Ibill being just on cue folds with there heads between there legs. Kills this guys account and probably did not even give him a phone call first.

I would tell everyone right now to switch to a billing company who will watch you back. Switch your accounts right now from Ibill because one day it may be you that Ibill cancels

CCbill is a good one.
First Rate Company.

Paolo - I completely agree with you. We need either a union or trade group that can interface with the government to show them we are business people and take our business seriously.

No serious person in the adult industry supports child porn. It's very much a fringe element.

The adult movie industry has a trade group called the Free Speech Coalition, who do a variety of things and have filed briefs up to the Supreme Court.

Should adult Webmasters have a similar trade group or some form of union? I think so.

This is huge, and absolutely out of control. iBill are bad news. I got that impression after their fiasco with 900 sales.

But this.. Jesus Christ. Roll on over and take it up the fucking arse. Never mind who you fuck over in the process. It's pretty bad that Frank's site got shut down, but what's worse is that millions of Americans now think he is some sort of CP smut peddler.

This is fucking disgusting.

Shame on Ibill. And shame on this Granholm moron.

She'd prefer all the hardcore content to be accessible without encrypted passwords i guess? Dumb bitch.

Better not lock your door when you go to sleep at night either. If it's locked, you've gotta be hiding something. And surely it's illegal!

I brought this up at the very first convention I attended in Vegas 2000. In 2001 adult related Internet sales accounted for 53% of all Internet transactions. Why don't have a group of people working to protect our interests?

I'd gladly put my free time into such an effort. Anyone else?

I would completely do it as well.

Good let them go after the cc companys

Bout fucking time.. You run CP your and process with any of the above, you ought be shut down..

This should of happened a long time ago

These billing companys make mad $$$ of cp and nude sites, ccbill is a HAVEN for CP websites, goto any CP website and you can bet they process with CCBILL or IBILL.

Hit them were it hurts, there pockets...

And to hell with the innocent bystanders? This is fucked. If you can't see how this is a bad thing, you're fucking thick.

innocent bystanders??

WTF do you mean innocent

IF there innocent they have NOTHING to worry about..

What CP site do you run?

Frank Bongiorno doesn't run a CP site.

But he still got turned off.

He has model releases to prove it.

Re: Webmasters' Union

There is something called MediaAlliance which is run out of San Francisco (I believe) that offers the closest thing I've seen to a 'union' that accepts independent webmasters. 'Online design' is a covered category of employment. If you can prove (1099, W2 or Schedule C) you've made $5000, you qualify. There are dues, and different benefit levels based on what you pay (you can get insurance, use a credit union, etc.) and they consider themselves 'socially conscious' and anticensorship. They've got a site you can check this stuff out on at
http://www.media-alliance.org/

They're anti-censorship (they're upset about ClearChannel buying newsstands or something in SanFran and 'controlling' the media) so maybe they've got something or someone that can help with this stuff.

Take care,
Michelle

Are you insane or just joking?

There is no such thing as innocent or not when it comes to adult prosecutions. Are you aware of how much time Larry Flynt has spent in jail? Are you aware of how much money Larry has spent defending himself? Are you aware that he was shot by some right wing asshole? Innocent has nothing to do with it when it comes to prosecutions of people selling adult content. These people want blood, they don't care who's innocent or guilty.

Are you telling me Frank B has nothing to worry about? His processing was pulled with absolutely no notice. His name has been dragged through the mud, and a bunch of ignorant fuckwits probably think he peddles CP now. I think he has a lot to worry abot.

It's called defermation of character. He, and every other innocent webmaster in this fiasco should sue. These claims are totally unsubstantiated. Read the whole article, you fuckin' gimp.

Interesting.