Adapted from http://www.aclu.org/court/cdadec.html
Anonymity is important to Internet users who seek to access sensitive information, such as users of the Critical Path AIDS Project's Web site, the users, particularly gay youth, of Queer Resources Directory, and users of Stop Prisoner Rape (SPR). Many members of SPR's mailing list have asked to remain anonymous due to the stigma of prisoner rape.
As an example of how anonymous you are when you access a Web site, the linked example gives you some indication of what a site can find out about you and how you can remain anonymous.
Adapted from http://www.aclu.org/court/cdadec.html
Verification of a credit card number over the Internet is not now technically possible.
Neither Visa nor Mastercard considers the Internet to be sufficiently secure under
the current technology to process transactions in that manner.
Although users can and do purchase products over the Internet by transmitting their credit card number, the seller must then process the transaction with Visa or Mastercard off-line using phone lines in the traditional way. Visa and Mastercard are in the process of developing means of credit card verification over the Internet.
Verification of identity only by credit card, if and when operational, will remain economically and practically unavailable for many of the non-commercial users of the Internet. Verification agencies would be expected to decline to process a card unless it accompanied a commercial transaction.
There was evidence that the fee charged by verification agencies to process a card, whether for a purchase or not, will preclude use of the credit-card verification defence by many non-profit, non-commercial Web sites. An author whose free Web site allows users to purchase gay and lesbian literature, indicated that she must pay $1 per verification to a verification agency. Her Web site can absorb this cost because it arises in connection with the sale of books available there.
Using credit card possession as proof of age, and requiring use of a credit card to enter a site, would impose a significant economic cost on non-commercial entities. Critical Path, for example, received 3,300 hits daily from February 4 through March 4, 1996. If Critical Path must pay a fee every time a user initially enters its site, then, to provide free access to its non-commercial site, it would incur a monthly cost far beyond its modest resources. The ACLU's Barry Steinhardt testified that maintenance of a credit card verification system for all visitors to the ACLU's Web site would require it to shut down its Web site because the projected cost would exceed its budget.
Credit card verification would significantly delay the retrieval of information on the Internet. Dr. Olsen, the expert testifying for the Government, agreed that even "a minute is [an] absolutely unreasonable [delay] . . . [P]eople will not put up with a minute." Plaintiffs' expert Donna Hoffman similarly testified that excessive delay disrupts the "flow" on the Internet and stifles both "hedonistic" and "goal-directed" browsing.
Imposition of a credit card requirement would completely bar adults who do not have a credit card and lack the resources to obtain one from accessing any blocked material. At this time, credit card verification is effectively unavailable to a substantial number of Internet content providers.
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