CDR: Re: Authenticate the "adult field", go to jail...

[Tim May]

At 3:57 PM -0500 11/29/00, David Honig wrote:
>At 02:41 PM 11/29/00 -0500, obvious at beta.freedom.net wrote:
>>In fact if anything this kind of prosecution is an argument *against*
>>getting into the ecash/ecredential business, especially if it is focused
>>on porn as some have proposed.  All you need is for someone to use it
>>to sell or authorize access to kiddie porn, and you're going to jail.
>>
>>Obvious.
>
>Great way to entrap, too.  Switch content, then bang.
>
>Some kind of 'common-carrier' protection would be helpful
>to those providing generic services like credit card validation.

The actual credit card companies have never, that I know of, been 
implicated in any of the Net porn cases (I don't mean "child porn," I 
mean the various cases we have heard about over the past dozen years, 
a la "Amateur Action').

This may say that they have a good team of lawyers and that local DAs 
like to cherry-pick their cases to go after less well-lawyered 
targets. Or it may say that there is an element of scienter involved.


>If the folks being charged made the case that they didn't know some
>of the content was 'tainted', they should get off.  You'd have to
>show that they were guilty of thoughtcrime themselves.

Scienter, i.e., knowledge. On the other hand, "ignorance of the law 
is no excuse."

Note that hotel operators are not held to be co-criminals when their 
hotel rooms are used for drug-dealing, prostitution (*), planning of 
crimes, etc.

(* Unless the hotel and/or its managers were knowingly involved, as 
is sometimes the case with hotels. But, still, if a murder or theft 
or whatever happens in a hotel room, the hotel owner is seldom 
charged.)

There should be similar inkeeper's exemptions for ISPs and payment 
intermediaries.

There are many examples where credit card companies are used in 
transactions which turn out to be illegal. So?

And the issue is not really whether the CC company "knows" what is 
being bought.

If I buy a gun with a CC number, and it turns out this was an illegal 
transaction, and the CC company clearly knew that a purchase was of a 
gun, does this implicate them?

How about CC numbers being used at flea markets, where a substantial 
portion of the goods being hawked are stolen? Or pirated (CDs)?

The notion of arresting those who act as financial intermediaries 
should be tested in the courts.


--Tim May
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