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Payment Processors are Still Policing Your Sex Life, and the Latest Victim is FetLife

Malcolm, Jeremy
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/03/payment-processors-are-still-policing-your-sex-life

Publisher:  Electronic Frontier Foundation
Date Written:  15/03/2017
Year Published:  2017  
Resource Type:  Article

The adult social network FetLife just lost its ability to process credit card payments because it offers a platform for members to discuss and to post depictions of consensual BDSM practices.

Abstract: 
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Excerpt:

If any illegal content were on the website that would indeed be cause for concern, but there is no evidence of this. The last time FetLife lost payment processing services in 2013, it was on the basis of complaints of illegal child pornography on the site. Yet on closer investigation, this turned out to amount to sexualized cartoon drawings of the Simpsons, which even if they may have been in poor taste, were constitutionally protected speech under U.S. law. Even so, the site clamped down on fantasy depictions or descriptions of underage sex and incest going forward, and its payment processing services were restored.

There is no further evidence of illegal content on FetLife today than there was back then. Nor does it seem obvious the card networks' content rules have been infringed; both networks prohibit imagery of "non-consensual sexual behavior" and "non-consensual mutilation of a person or body part", but consensual BDSM is neither of these. Nonetheless, the credit card ban has had its desired effect of further constricting the range of permissible speech on FetLife, with the site introducing new restrictions on a broad range of edgy sexual practices, including consensual non-consent, race play, drug and alcohol use, and scarification.

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