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Lots of outrage at the card companies, but strangely, no outrage at the laws that actually caused this. One is the Australian law to remove that type of content and the other is the US law that says the payment processor can't participate in illegal transactions.
Were Steam selling it to kids?
https://www.amazon.com/Streetcar-Named-Desire-Blu-ray/dp/B07...
Why is Mastercard processing money for this movie that contains a rape scene?
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how do you "take cash" over the Internet?
Mullvad VPN takes cash, you post it to them.
Full title that doesn't fit in the HN headline: "Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down, but Valve says payment processors 'specifically cited' a Mastercard rule about damaging the brand" (For the people who don't click the link to read the article.)
There are definitely a lot of links in this chain. Maybe leafo can chime-in and say exactly what happened with Itch.io. But I suspect that someone downstream of Visa/Mastercard anticipated that the payment card companies would not permit the transactions and relayed that back up to the merchants, and they shut it off preemptively. But it's hard to say. Mastercard is now saying that they never said or did anything. So…
There's even a (non-public) list of keyword banned terms.
Dumb question: what if Steam only takes cash or crypto payment for these games, and leave them on the market? Cash is loaded from debit card and can be used for buying any games, while crypto apparently always works for everything. Would they still be on the hook?
how do you "take cash" over the Internet?
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Then they would just get removed in Australia, not worldwide.
My guess is that Steam wasn't able to adequately block the games in Austrailia. If people use a VPN to access the content, could Steam still be liable?
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how do you "take cash" over the Internet?
Mullvad VPN takes cash, you post it to them.
I don't think Valve could feasibly implement this at their scale - especially if this method was the _only_ way to acquire the games in question.
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> it's not like you can boycott Mastercard or VISA In many countries, if you pay locally, you absolutely can. China's UnionPay, India's UPI, PayNow in Singapore, PromptPay in Thailand, PayPal, Cash App, and more.
That's great to hear, but this is a US-centric complaint discussing US-centric companies.
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Do you have info on the US law? I am curious if it follows the same trend Russia set years ago with requiring them to put a large deposit and if they break the rules they get to keep all the money.
It doesn't go that far. These are part of the Know Your Customer type of law. These have increasingly been pushed as part of anti money laundering onto banks, investments, and processors. If a company is selling illegal things or things that even could potentially be illegal, then they get blacklisted. Similar thing to pot companies.
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>Incorrect, it applies to companies too as companies are citizens according to citizens united ruling over a decade ago. This doesn't even make sense. If a corporation is a person, then 1A Freedom of Speech means that the government cannot restrict the corporations political speech. The corporation is absolutely allowed to restrict their users free speech, including political speech, because A) the bill of rights onl…
What kind of "speech" are we talking about here? If a payment processor is already required to be secure, it could also be required not to deny any legal transactions. This isn't even political, you wouldn't expect a mobile carrier to censor your phone calls (at least in the EU we don't have that.. yet).
In the US, payment processors are not common carriers and operate on a contractual regime that allows them to refuse or terminate service for non-compliance, risk management, or policy reasons.
Mobile companies here are common carriers and are much more strictly regulated.