In compliance topics, the coming into force of ISO 37302:2020 as a certifiable standard is the topic of the hour. The possibility of certifying, within the scope of transnational business, the ethics and probity of a certain business model seems extremely important to me, in order to control risk directly from the market’s point of view.

Although today there are specific provisions to control risks such as money laundering, corruption, and the like in regulations that can be transplanted to a sectorial regulation model, the pornography business remains timidly outside the scope of compliance programs.

Without any industry-specific compliance guidelines, adult porn platforms then derive their compliance programs simply ‘out of the air’, which can result in scandals like the one seen with Porn Hub in late 2020. (read here how PornHub tried to solve the case)

On many of the adult platforms, the lack of any prior risk mapping and the blatant irregularity of the reporting channels stand out, ultimately explaining why their ‘numbers’, in terms of illegal files, are so low compared to other non-porn platforms like Facebook or Twitter, for example.

In the absence of regulation that deals specifically with the risks and difficulties inherent in the industry, “contracting conditions” that border on the impossible (pushed by an extreme low risk-appetite of, for example, credit card companies) are beginning to appear, such as MasterCard’s stipulation, for example, that the consent of all parties involved in the images must be obtained.

The problem with stipulations like this begins, right from the start, with the language. We must agree, for example, that consent at the moment of production of the images (the real object of criminal valuation) has nothing to do with consent to make the images available, and is not feasible, for example, via any kind of form.

It is time to move away from independent regulations and consider, in terms of regulatory compliance, a sectoral standard adequate and applicable to the entire pornography industry, certifiable, in the future, also by financial institutions of all kinds.