According to ibill, you're now accountable for your affiliates, even your competition
 

This is part of an email that I just received from ibill, informing us that Visa is clamping down on illegal content.

"Keep in mind your site may not be involved in any illegal activity
and may still be at substantial risk. For example, an affiliate or
unrelated third party can register a URL, set up a site page with
appropriate meta-tags, and direct the page to open a window
containing your site."

I guess they are saying that Visa is unable to tell the difference between a link or frame to your site, and your site itself... :helpme

I was just musing to someone on ICQ the other day that it may not be long until Visa starts policing affiliates as well as the master sites. Is the sky falling yet? :)

good - about time some fucker made aff programs pay for the shitty russian webmasters who have made our industry the scum of the web :thumbsup

perhaps these aff programs will actually look at who is sending traffic and how now :thumbsup

Here's the full email.



August 28, 2003



Dear Client



iBill is committed to ensuring you have the necessary information
to protect your business. Pursuant to new and more stringent
additions to iBill's contractual requirements, VISA regulations
state that anyone processing transactions for Websites containing
actual or suggested illegal content will be terminated by VISA
without appeal and placed on the terminated merchant file.

It is a violation of iBill's terms and conditions for our clients
to present any illegal content via their Websites. Consequently,
iBill Compliance would like to remind you of our policies and
procedures regarding illegal content, as outlined in this letter.

Given this zero-tolerance policy, in order to protect your business
from possible termination, it is vital that you examine your
Websites on a regular basis and proactively remove any and all
actual or perceived illegal content from your sites. These files
must be removed immediately.

Clients not properly reviewing their sites who are found to be
offering illegal content will be immediately terminated from iBill
processing. Those clients found in violation of the above policies
and/or laws related to illegal content will be reported to the
proper authorities, if applicable.

Effective immediately, you are required to start monitoring your
site(s) and remove any illegal or objectionable content or images,
such as child pornography. Illegal content includes both actual
and suggested images.

Additionally, it is important for you to understand that VISA, as a
regular business practice, looks for the use of "illegal keywords"
indicating sites that may contain illegal content. Visa's illegal
keywords are 'lolita', 'pedo', and 'preteen'. VISA checks for
these words on the Internet every day.

Keep in mind your site may not be involved in any illegal activity
and may still be at substantial risk. For example, an affiliate or
unrelated third party can register a URL, set up a site page with
appropriate meta-tags, and direct the page to open a window
containing your site.

While you cannot search for referring URL meta-tags without
visiting the site, you can check for VISA's illegal word list
within the referring URL. To help you accomplish this, iBill has
created scripts (in multiple programming/scripting languages) that
you can add to each page of your site. The script will block any
referring URL which contains VISA's illegal keywords. The sample
scripts can be found at this location:

http://www.ibill.com/support/revsharescripts.cfm

To further protect your site from affiliates or unrelated third
parties that use illegal words in meta-tags rather than the
referring URL, use a search engine and input your domain name and
the illegal VISA keywords. If you get any exact matches, contact
the webmaster and tell them to remove your information or block the root URL.

iBill has made it a priority to help you proactively manage your
Websites relative to card association regulations and obscenity
laws. Please make the commitment to comply with these
business-critical requests as soon as possible.

Thank you for your cooperation.



iBill

hmm.. they wont be policing the affiliate. the program ppl would.

Wait till they say affiliates have to pay visa for some bullshit law too

True, I meant more that Visa doesn't seem to make a distinction between affiliates or even any site linking to you. Refer to the strong wording in ibills email

"Pursuant to new and more stringent
additions to iBill's contractual requirements, VISA regulations
state that anyone processing transactions for Websites containing
actual or suggested illegal content will be terminated by VISA
without appeal and placed on the terminated merchant file."

I hope it's just that ibill are being ultra careful, rather than Visa actually threatening termination based on the linking text of another webmaster.

Say goodbye to open enrollment affiliate programs.