GoFuckYourself.com - Adult Webmaster Forum - View Single Post - MasterCard Sued for Antitrust Violations & Fraud

SleazyDream · 05-13-2003, 12:55 AM

you gota admit - epoch has balls...

a lot of good points came up here - on both sides.

I'm thinking that mastercard doesn't want to release the list of fraudlent cards mostly because several of epoch's clients are the very same people responsible for using fraud credit cards. That's not saying Epoch would ever use that bad card list for anything other than a scrub list - but knowing that Epoch has clients that would use that list with numberous other processing companies to commit fraud if they got their hands on the list it's probally just too risky for mastercard to let that list out.
Mastercard could easily set up some sort of central checking system though that would allow merchants like epoch to verify if a card is a stolen card quite easily without releasing the list.

just my 2 cent perspective on that........

as for things like epoch hosting the webpage - personally I think this is a good idea. At least there can be some controll as to what happens at the point of sale if this becomes a requriement.

The cross selling issue is a huge point to consider. 99.9999% of all cross sales I would wager are just tricking the consumer. Not good business and risky to continue with condisering the current climate on chargeback ratios. Cross sales are not about a quality product that someone wants to buy- they are about greed. I'd wager that the majority of sites sold in cross sales don't even have any real content in them - they'd mostly full of upsell feeds. This could be totally controlled again by having a 3rd party processer host the join page. Any cross sales on a 3rd party processor controlled join page would be legitimate or at least a lot closer to being legitimate.

reality is - what's it worth? economics says it worth whatever you can get for it. - but then the question of fraud or tricking the consumer comes in. Well you can rent a porn movie for $5-$10. payperview in hotels go as high as $20 a movie. a good porn site (without crappy feeds) can have 100+ real movies to download.... for a month's membership.. $40 is fair for that - a bargain. what isn't fair is leading a person to believe they are goign pay $4 - recurrng at $39 and then having them hit with a $120 bill since there was hard to find boxes pre-checked for a cross sell on something the consumer didn't want in the first place.

so what's it all mean? Mastercard needs to define some CLEAR and DECISIVE rules. The problem is there hasn't been anything concrete. This industry moves faster than rules can be imposed on it and that very fact is in the end gona make mastercard want to simply bail ship. Being a monolopy is actually in Epoch's FAVOR though since as a monolopy mastercard in the end may be legally FORCED to deal with porn since there is no other option.

Personally I hope Epoch wins and gets some clarity on what it can and can't do. Without that clarity anyone who gives them shit for crossselling and the like is basically full of crap since they havn't been told (to my knowledge) not to do any of that stuff.

now I'm going to say something again here - let this sink in.
In the END, I think that Mastercard being a monolopy is actually in Epoch's FAVOR though since as a monolopy mastercard in the end may be legally FORCED to deal with porn since there is no other viable option even if they want to bail out of porn and high risk web transactions totally.

Good luck Epoch.

05-13-2003, 12:55 AM
SleazyDream I'm here for SPORT Industry Role: Join Date: Jul 2001 Location: Phone # (401) 285-0696 Posts: 41,470	you gota admit - epoch has balls... a lot of good points came up here - on both sides. I'm thinking that mastercard doesn't want to release the list of fraudlent cards mostly because several of epoch's clients are the very same people responsible for using fraud credit cards. That's not saying Epoch would ever use that bad card list for anything other than a scrub list - but knowing that Epoch has clients that would use that list with numberous other processing companies to commit fraud if they got their hands on the list it's probally just too risky for mastercard to let that list out. Mastercard could easily set up some sort of central checking system though that would allow merchants like epoch to verify if a card is a stolen card quite easily without releasing the list. just my 2 cent perspective on that........ as for things like epoch hosting the webpage - personally I think this is a good idea. At least there can be some controll as to what happens at the point of sale if this becomes a requriement. The cross selling issue is a huge point to consider. 99.9999% of all cross sales I would wager are just tricking the consumer. Not good business and risky to continue with condisering the current climate on chargeback ratios. Cross sales are not about a quality product that someone wants to buy- they are about greed. I'd wager that the majority of sites sold in cross sales don't even have any real content in them - they'd mostly full of upsell feeds. This could be totally controlled again by having a 3rd party processer host the join page. Any cross sales on a 3rd party processor controlled join page would be legitimate or at least a lot closer to being legitimate. reality is - what's it worth? economics says it worth whatever you can get for it. - but then the question of fraud or tricking the consumer comes in. Well you can rent a porn movie for $5-$10. payperview in hotels go as high as $20 a movie. a good porn site (without crappy feeds) can have 100+ real movies to download.... for a month's membership.. $40 is fair for that - a bargain. what isn't fair is leading a person to believe they are goign pay $4 - recurrng at $39 and then having them hit with a $120 bill since there was hard to find boxes pre-checked for a cross sell on something the consumer didn't want in the first place. so what's it all mean? Mastercard needs to define some CLEAR and DECISIVE rules. The problem is there hasn't been anything concrete. This industry moves faster than rules can be imposed on it and that very fact is in the end gona make mastercard want to simply bail ship. Being a monolopy is actually in Epoch's FAVOR though since as a monolopy mastercard in the end may be legally FORCED to deal with porn since there is no other option. Personally I hope Epoch wins and gets some clarity on what it can and can't do. Without that clarity anyone who gives them shit for crossselling and the like is basically full of crap since they havn't been told (to my knowledge) not to do any of that stuff. now I'm going to say something again here - let this sink in. In the END, I think that Mastercard being a monolopy is actually in Epoch's FAVOR though since as a monolopy mastercard in the end may be legally FORCED to deal with porn since there is no other viable option even if they want to bail out of porn and high risk web transactions totally. Good luck Epoch. __________________ This dog, is dog, a dog, good dog, way dog, to dog, keep dog, an dog, idiot dog, busy dog, for dog, 20 dog, seconds dog! Now read without the word dog.