From the WSJ Opinion Archives
SCENE & HEARD
Where Discredit Is Due
Visa cracks down on child porn.
In the credit card business, there may soon be some things that money really can't buy. At least if you're Pete Townshend. This week, Visa made headlines with news it will be working with police to prevent its customers from getting their hands on child pornography.
Regulating the Internet has proven to be a fool's errand in recent years: Efforts to crack down on music piracy and offensive Web sites have been about as successful as trying to grab water. Visa's move may indicate the beginning of a new frontier--the powerful role private companies have to play in regulating Internet content.
Up until now, the story of Internet regulation has been mostly a tale of sporadic and ineffective government fumbling. The Communications Decency Act, which aimed to protect youngsters who accidentally plugged the word "girls" into Infoseek, was struck down by the Supreme Court.
Now there's the occasional crackdown on Web sites designed for collecting terrorist money under the guise of Islamic charity or the quandary Google recently faced when the Chinese government ordered it to deny access to political dissident sites.
But there's been little in the way of curbing the free-for-all as a matter of business decisions. Now this. Along with kiddie porn, which is illegal, Visa intends to object to the use of its card on hate sites as well as those that cater to animal fetishes.
The distinction is important, because while denying the use of a credit card for a purchase that is already illegal raises few objections, barring access to offensive sites is sure to raise the hackles of some of our civil-liberties groups. Visits to hate sites are legal, after all. And much of the content pre-existed any membership fees that certain sites now charge.
But more saliently, the use of credit cards can become a deterrent because of its potential as a tracking device. According to the London Mirror, a recent sweep by the company turned up hundreds of thousands who had used the card on child pornography sites in Britain alone, including Mr. Townsend, a guitarist from the Who.
But if making judgments about content is new territory for the Internet yahoos, it has plenty of precedent in the old bricks-and-mortar realm, from Blockbuster's family oriented movie selections to Wal-Mart's similar stocking decisions with popular music. In 1996 Wal-Mart enraged some in the music industry with the decision that it wouldn't stock albums with certain violent or explicit lyrics.
Yet as one of the largest retail music distributors in the country, Wal-Mart gave many artists and their labels an incentive to offer versions appropriate to a general audience. Despite grumpy Web sites suggesting "Just Say No to Wal-Mart," the outrage passed and the policy hung on.
Time will now tell whether other plastics like MasterCard will follow Visa's lead, or end up everywhere they don't want to be.
Ms. Levey is an assistant features editor of The Wall Street Journal's editorial page. Her column appears on alternate Wednesdays.
