Underage Affiliates

[gaystoryman]

If it's the program owner's responsibility, then what proof is needed to verify that the affiliate or designer or such is indeed of legal age? I mean just because they say so wouldn't seem to be enough. :morning:

[chadknowslaw]

Providing pornographic material to a minor is a crime.

It does not matter if that person is an "affiliate" or if he is a "good guy" who sends a lot of joins.

Ask yourself 2 questions:

1. Is this person I sent images to younger than 18 years old?

2. Are the images I sent to this person sexually explicit or pornographic?

If you answer "yes" to both of those questions, you are guilty of a crime. Whether you are charged, convicted, or are punished at all is up to the prosecutor in your jurisdiction and/or the jurisdiction where the minor is located, and this is one law where "It doesn't apply to me, I don't live in the US" is NOT going to work. I don't think the scenario of giving images to an affiliate would be so heinous that the mechanism for taking you into custody in your own country and extraditing to the US for trial would be put into place, but a bench warrant would issue and if your passport was scanned for entry into the US, even if you are on a flight that is diverted, you will go to jail. If you live in the US, then a warrant would be issued for your arrest and if you are ever stopped for a traffic violation, you will go to jail. If one weekend some ambitious duty sergeant decides to go through outstanding warrants of people in his beat area and comes up with your name, then the police come to your door and take you to jail. At least if you are a US citizen with a US charge you can post bail.

:-)

I don't like lawyers that tell you that the sky is falling and you are going to go to jail, but if you give pornographic material to a minor you will probably go to jail and not get any sympathy. There will be a few people that will stick up for you, but none that will send you money for legal bills. Most will say "The dufus should have made sure the affiliate was 18" and then they will go back and check the ages of their own affiliates, because they never checked but now that you are charged they want to cover their asses.

[Alex_Manifest_M]

Given those consequences, how should we best protect ourselves to insure that our affiliates are all of legal age?

[chadknowslaw]

First, ASK

In the sign up, make sure your affiliates must affirm that they are 18 years of age. Ask for the date of birth.

There is not a way to check an ID online, but for US residents you should require a Social Security number. Since you are sending this person money, that is not an over zealous request. An affiliate that is going to send you good traffic will have a mailing address also. If an affiliate does not want to give you a mailing address, do you think that person is going to be a good affiliate sending a lot of traffic, or just a wanker fly by night??

At least make a conscious effort. You cannot protect yourself 100% but at least avoid the easy mistakes.

[IdolKnights]

Chad - here is the issue I'm seeing

CCbill and the like have an automated sign-up process where I can apply to become an affiliate to a website. When I sign up I have the option to hide address from webmaster (not hide from ccbill)

They do have an area where I have to submit an SS or Business license number But that too is sent to the processor.

Now as a webmaster, it is OUR job to ensure the affiliate is an adult. You state that we should ad the DOB field to the application form. But is this enough to ensure, as the webmaster, we have asked the question Where as the personal information of the party applying to the application is sent directly to the processor.

And if we are still responsible for fact finding the information from the affiliate, how do we obtain the information without being redundant and opening up a new market for phishing sites?

I fully understand the nature of sending an image to someone underage and it's the sole reason of my question... how to ensure the party is not under the age of 18 when we don't gain access to the information sent directly to the third party processor?

[chadknowslaw]

Very good question -- and I do not have the answer.

I think Corvette checks in occasionally -- I will send him a link to this thread and get his take on it, because it is a valid issue.

[haganxy]

i want to add that 2 leading affiliate programs: NATS and MPA3 DO NOT ask for an affiliate's birthdate in their default setups. that bothers me. does it bother anyone else?

[DEVELISH]

There is not a way to check an ID online, but for US residents you should require a Social Security number. Since you are sending this person money, that is not an over zealous request.

I raised IdolKnight's question in a german board before and got bashed VERY bad.

SSN - is there a way of checking the person's age with that SSN on hand? How would you go about non-us affiliates?

DEV.....