Every day, I witness artists I support being increasingly restricted by large corporations. These entities arbitrarily discriminate, imposing their morality on others without any accountability. Moreover, there are no reasonable alternatives to their services. Small artists and creatives who aim to create art, illustrations, animations, voice acting for an adult audience are suffering due to overzealous moral crusades against unrelated issues surrounding professional filmed pornography, sex work and sex trafficking. While we may have our own personal qualms and moral judgements around these subjects, our individual opinions shouldn't have any sort of bearing on legal protected artistic expression under the 1st amendment and the production and sale of such fictional and protected material.

Visa and MasterCard have established a quasi-monopoly in the financial sector that allows them to dictate terms beyond their purview. Their actions have led to a form of financial censorship that infringes upon the freedom of expression of many artists. In just the past few weeks we have seen Visa and MasterCard's pressure lead to removal of service from Japanese site DLsite, a platform for Japanese creators to sell art, video games, comics and other products to consumers around the world. International customers are now unable to buy from this platform and spend their money as they so choose. 

According to the Nilson Report (2019), Visa and MasterCard together account for over 85% of all credit card transactions globally - a clear indication of their disproportionate influence in this sphere. This dominance has allowed them significant control over what content is permissible for monetization.

PayPal, another large company involved in sending and receiving payments online has had a history of changing the rules around buying and selling adult materials including everything from adult toys and physical goods to private art commissions from artists. PayPal has established it as the dominant platform for conducting sales online with no obvious competitor. It is the defacto service used by independent freelance creators to earn an income, and they too limit usage from creatives such as Illustrators and writers that create adult materials which don't have the same potential risks as sex work and pornography involving live actors. This forces adult creators to use PayPal in secret lest they not have any income. 

We believe in freedom of expression as an essential right for all individuals - including artists who cater to adult audiences. It is time we put an end to this corporate overreach that threatens our creative communities' livelihoods.

We call upon lawmakers and regulators in the US to scrutinize these practices by PayPal, Visa and MasterCard closely. We urge them to establish guidelines that protect creators from arbitrary financial censorship, and impose de facto laws on citizens and businesses internationally without recourse. Such large payment processors should be operated as utilities, and should be obligated to process all legal transactions without discrimination.

Stand with us today; sign this petition if you believe in safeguarding artistic freedom against corporate monopolies!