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Comment on Mastercard release a statement about game stores, payment processors and adult content

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bouh@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

In fact this statement states that they ask their clients to litteraly do the job of justice. That’s quite scary.

Ensuring a card cannot be used to buy illegal content.

That means they can shut you down if they think you didn’t do enough, which is literally their whim.

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chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
Or if there is any possible ambiguity in the law. I’m thinking it’s possible this has something to do with the recent weakening of constitutional protections for adult content in the US, where censorship by states of somewhat arbitrarily “obscene” content can be deemed illegal. The quote in the article by Valve seems to reference the concept of offensiveness in Mastercard’s policies:

Payment processors rejected this, and specifically cited Mastercard’s Rule 5.12.7 and risk to the Mastercard brand. See www.mastercard.us/content/…/mastercard-rules.pdf.

the rule including the text:

The sale of a product or service, including an image, which is patently offensive and lacks serious artistic value (such as, by way of example and not limitation, images of nonconsensual sexual behavior, sexual exploitation of a minor, nonconsensual mutilation of a person or body part, and bestiality), or any other material that the Corporation deems unacceptable to sell in connection with a Mark.

So what I’m reading between the lines here is, there is now doubt among the lawyers of credit card companies or the lawyers of their middlemen that these games are for sure legal, and not in violation of obscenity laws that rely on hazy standards of offensiveness.
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- Capricorn_Geriatric@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
  It never was about the laws. If it were, Mastercard wouldn’t have been doing it for quite some time now.
  
  It’s truly idiotic. They backed down to 200 phone calls from CS. They probably cited that rule, saying doing what they do (processing payments) will damage their brand.
  
  Lo and behold, once they stopped processing transactions their brand got damaged. And due to the ego damage already associated, they won’t back down and backtrack not that they actually have a problem on their hands. What with their brand being seen as discriminatory, weak to undue influence and excersizing undue power against their own clients. Very “good brand” of you, Mastercard.
  
  If Mastercard wants to display Christo-fascist family friendlyness they can slap a cross onto their logo and change the font to Comic sans.
  
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  - chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
    The precedent setting supreme court ruling I’m thinking of is very recent, and there are other recent significant changes to law that could also be relevant. My guess is that the phone calls didn’t make the difference on their own, but rather prompted an internal conversation about legal liability given the new landscape and how they should be handling it to best avoid potential damages.
    
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