Suit complicates First Data's move to cut porn tie
<http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~33~2438413,00.html> DenverPost.com - BUSINESS Friday, October 1, 2004 Denver, CO Article Published: Friday, October 01, 2004 Suit complicates First Data's move to cut porn tie By Aldo Svaldi Denver Post Staff Writer First Data Corp. says it has sworn off porn, but a lawsuit could complicate the Greenwood Village company's efforts to cut its ties to the lucrative industry. First Data stopped payment processing for Internet Billing Co. after its contract with First Data expired Sept. 15. Internet Billing is a Florida company that Forbes.com describes as one of the country's largest middlemen between Internet porn sites and banks. "First Data regularly evaluates its lines of business to ensure they are a good fit for the company," the company said in a statement. "We have determined that processing payments of the adult entertainment marketplace is inconsistent with our core values." Internet Billing, also known as iBill, filed a lawsuit two days later against the company and asked a New York state court to force First Data to work with it until it could switch to a new processor in November. The court denied iBill's request. Internet Billing did not respond to an interview request. Penthouse International purchased the company in March for $23.5 million. First Data, which in the past has kept its involvement with the adult entertainment industry quiet, said it had given iBill plenty of notice the contract was ending. "First Data provided iBill with multiple notices that its contract would not be extended after expiration," the company said. First Data has been terminating all of its contracts with adult entertainment providers as they expire, a spokeswoman said. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
-- On 1 Oct 2004 at 10:32, R. A. Hettinga wrote:
First Data has been terminating all of its contracts with adult entertainment providers as they expire, a spokeswoman said.
Way back at the beginning, cypherpunks said that the internet could result in alarming loss of privacy, or alarming improvement in privacy. As events turned out, it went to alarming loss of privacy, as Bill Gates, Oliver North and the porn sites have discovered. The problem is not irreversible. If Oliver North had consulted a ten year old, the kid probably would have told him how to make sure his emails were really deleted. I would have thought that the anti-trust debacle would have inspired Bill Gates to give higher priority to privacy preserving software. Now that we finally see potential threats becoming real, perhaps people will, eventually, belatedly, start covering themselves from these threats. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG OLPBj3P5+a0AMi3yjd+CWMKIt31RADZCuotKF/Ih 4pWB1qcPC2GT4Gah22MCAlXN4mbYb7039CZzAK4UZ
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James A. Donald -
R. A. Hettinga