Back in 2003 VISA passed a rule saying you couldn't use the phrase "age verficiation" because the implication was that ownership of a VISA card was proof that you were an adult.

Some AVS's required webmasters to remove any mention of the phrase or anything like "protecting minors." Others like UGAS just seemed to have carried on calling themselves an AVS.

The whole thing has caused a great deal of confusion in the business. In some cases wm's submitting galleries to an AVS couldn't mention the word, but then when they submitted to a link list, they were still submitting under the category of AVS. Other wm's had long stopped submitting and didn't give a shit about the new rules, they didn't make the compliance changes, and so there are thousands of pages out there still saying AVS. Others still proclaimed it was the death of AVS and many listened and like lemmings just simply moved on without seeing if AVS was truly dead. And anyone who came along afterwards was just simply confused.

I wouldn't dream of censoring pics on AVS tours. I think that is so 1997. I remember when AVS first started that was a typical sales pitch. The other pitch on newsgroups was that the FBI was going to start arresting anyone who had XXX pictures up that weren't protected behind and AVS ...

I think if you expect someone to pull out their credit card, you ought to show them some dick first. Would you invite a pictureless trick over that you met on gay.com? Of course not.

When I first started my AVS hubs, I didn't show much of anything, in fact, I did the old "click here for a preview" and it went right to a join page. When I smarted up and put up proper preview pictures, my sales went through the roof.

Cheers
Michael