Important Announcement about
RubberZone and PupZone

Hello, RubberZone.com Member –

We are writing to you today regarding changes that are coming due to onerous and intrusive new laws in the United States, as well as increased financial and policy burdens imposed by credit card banks.

Even if you are outside the United States, these policies will have an impact on you, and potentially affect every adult-content web site with any kind of business presence in the United States, so please read on...

“Age Verification” Laws

Multiple states have recently enacted laws which require adult web sites to force their users to give their identity information to private 3rd-party companies, who will then correlate that private information with transaction databases and public records, to attempt to determine that the user is an adult. This subjects the user to a massive invasion of privacy, and the exposure of sexual interests, and financial data, to unknown/unaccountable parties. And it exposes web sites to a high cost-burden, as users of free or preview accounts will also have to be verified at a cost.

Failure to comply can result in fines of up to $10,000 per day, per state. And action can be initiated by members of the public – puritanical hate groups will mobilize, as they often have before, to harass and entrap responsible web site operators. Imagine waking up to multiple $10,000 lawsuits from a dozen states. Even if victorious in fending off such lawsuits, it would leave most people bankrupt from the legal costs.

At least two states have also proposed criminal penalties.

People could go to prison – NOT because an underage person accessed content – but simply because they do not share your private identity data with a 3rd-party “verification” service.

You can read more about these laws at these links:

Ineffective, Unconstitutional, and Dangerous: The Problem with Age Verification Mandates

Frequently Asked Questions About Age Verification

These laws are blatantly unconstitutional, putting a heavy burden on site operators based solely on the content of that web site being disfavored by the government. In the United States, this is a clear violation of the First Amendment.

What is prompting this email now is the news from this week that the United States Supreme Court will not stop these laws from going into effect. It could take years for all the court cases to be worked out, with many web sites and users being harmed in the interim.

How This Affects RubberZone

RubberZone, like the vast majority of adult web sites, is a small business. A family business. We simply cannot afford to defend ourselves if we were to become a target.

Therefore, even though we are giving in to the forces of censorship and hate, we must take steps to insulate ourselves from these attacks.

As soon as is practical, most likely this month, we will be deploying code to detect the US state from which a user’s computer is connecting to our server, and if it is in one of the states with these laws, the user will not be permitted to access the site, and will be redirected elsewhere.

(This also comes at a bad time because we have been working on rewriting the site’s software so that we can upgrade to a new server, and now that project will have to be set aside, and the old code, which has been frozen during this process, will have to be modified.)

The following states will be restricted from access first:

• Arkansas
• Louisiana
• Mississippi
• Montana
• North Carolina
• Texas
• Utah
• Virginia

And soon after, these states, which have laws going into effect soon, will also be restricted:

• Alabama - October 1, 2024
• Georgia - July 1, 2024
• Idaho - July 1, 2024
• Indiana - July 1, 2024
• Kansas - July 1, 2024
• Kentucky - July 14, 2024
• Nebraska - July 18, 2024
• Oklahoma - November 1, 2024
• Florida - January 1, 2025

As mentioned earlier, these changes can effect everyone, worldwide. If you are in a country that is hostile to adult content (just like the United States is increasingly becoming), you may be using something called a VPN – Virtual Private Network, to get around your country’s firewalls or simply to ensure your privacy. VPNs let you select servers anywhere in the world to act as your computer. This means, hypothetically, if you are in China and are using a VPN with an endpoint in Texas, that you will be blocked. If you are blocked from using sites or are redirected to a notice about age verification, this is why.

It is our sincere hope that the Supreme Court will eventually do the right thing and strike down these content-based restrictions, and prevent further byzantine laws that are impossible to comply with. (Unfortunately, the court doesn’t have a great track record lately.) Until such time, however, preventing access from these states is our only defense, short of completely shutting down.

Credit Card Companies

This brings us to the next issue, which is somewhat related. Credit Card companies, in response to pressure groups, are becoming increasingly restrictive on what content you can host on an adult web site. You may have noticed purges of fetish content on other sites, especially “fans” sites, and this is in response to vague and overreaching new policies from the Credit Card banks.

Here in the United States, there are no regulations constraining banks from being nosy about content. There are also no regulations preventing banks from charging adult web businesses more than regular businesses, rather than simply looking at performance.

The fact is that RubberZone’s credit card transactions have been processed with the same merchant bank for nearly 14 years, and we have fewer complaints or refund requests than your typical corner coffee shop. Despite that, we must permanently keep a $4,000 reserve frozen with them to cover potential complaints (we will never see that money again so long as we stay in business), pay 3X the normal transaction rate (which is still lower compared to people trying to get into business today), and pay a huge sum every year for “monitoring”.

Basically, we are paying the credit card companies to come snoop around and make sure that our content conforms to whatever their freakout-of-the-week is going to be.

Re: “huge sum”, it used to be $500, then it was $1,000. This year, for all adult merchants in the US, it has gone up to $1,450. To add insult to injury, this year they accidentally charged us twice, once at the old rate, once at the new rate. That really hurt, and we’re still cleaning up from that mess. (The refund is supposedly on the way.) On top of that, we also take quarterly exams to ensure we understand credit card privacy and security regulations and that our customer service and refund policies are in alignment. We pay up to $80 each time for the privilege of taking those exams.

Put another way, we have to sell over EIGHTY 90-day subscriptions to our customers just to maintain a merchant account. Symbolically, the first 80 of you who subscribe every year, that goes right to the banks. Not to hosting, not to performers, not to gear, and certainly not to food or our mortgage.

If the banks continue to restrict what kinds of fetish content we can offer – basic bondage may be next on the chopping block – we may be forced to stop taking credit cards.

(If you are wondering why we don’t use an overseas credit card processor, there are other issues, which take too long to go into right now. Short version: We tried that, it cost too much, and that processor went out of business and took a lot of people’s money with them.)

Which brings us to Cryptocurrency. Now, many people are quite skeptical of the utility and sustainability of crypto. It remains to be proven if crypto can be a long-term viable means of exchange. But, under the present circumstances, it does serve as an effective hedge against the possibility of losing the ability to take credit card payments.

We have signed up with a crypto payment processor that specializes in working with adult businesses. At some point in the future, possibly after the move to the new server, we will begin accepting payments in various popular cryptocurrencies. When that happens, we’ll email you about how it works. (We intend to continue accepting credit cards as long as the banks will let us - crypto is meant as an insurance policy and also as an upgrade to serve those customers who prefer to use it.)

What You Can Do

If you live in a state with the new “age verification” laws, you can contact your legislators. If you live in another state, you can contact your local legislators to let them know that you do not want such laws coming to your state, and your federal legislators to let them know that the actions of a few states are affecting the entire nation.

If you are in the adult industry, or just want to be supportive, please consider donating to the Free Speech Coalition, the nonprofit trade association which represents the adult industry in the United States.

And, frankly, you can help us out by buying a subscription or merchandise. We intend to keep the lights on and to continue producing content, so long as we bring in enough revenue to justify the site’s existence. Your continued support is what keeps us going. Despite all the problems listed above, we hope that you can summon the confidence to make a purchase. It genuinely helps.

What about current subscribers in those states?

If you are currently a subscriber in one of the states facing restriction, we will be keeping track of your expiration date and the dates that the restrictions go into effect. If the states or the courts should rescind those laws (and haven’t driven us out of business), you will receive the balance of your subscription time, plus a free additional 90-days subscription to help make up for the inconvenience.

Unfortunately, we cannot offer refunds. This is an action that is being taken against us by outside entities, forcing us to cut off access, and we simply cannot afford to refund everyone affected all at once. We would much rather have you as a customer who is able to access the content and is happy with our service. So, the best we can do is keep track of things and make it up to the customers once sanity is restored.

PupZone

RubberZone’s brother web site, PupZone, hasn’t been getting much love or attention from us in recent years. Stomper, Squirm’s husband, has a mainstream career and just doesn’t have the time to be involved. Several years ago, we made PupZone a free site, basically to keep the profiles and forums going for our users. But, with everything else that is going on, there just isn’t the time to monitor the site, participate in discussions, and certainly not to do a major upgrade and server migration.

So, unfortunately, we will be closing PupZone at the end of May.

The PupZone user data is private, so we will not be transferring users to any other sites, or selling the site to another entity. However, if people would like to suggest a reputable pup-oriented site, we could do a mailer to our users encouraging them to go join that site. If you have suggestions, please bring them up in the PupZone forums.

Conclusion

We really hate sending out bad news like this. (Almost as much as we hate having to take these steps to protect us from the forces of intolerance.) We would much prefer not to reveal the bureaucracy behind the scenes, and to keep the fun stuff front and foremost.

Looking forward, work is (slowly) progressing on the code update. The new server is already up and operating, but there is much code in the site’s software that needs changing (much of it is over 20 years old). Email and database services are already moved and working well. (Continuing the theme of financial burdens, this means we are currently paying to run two main servers!)

There is a fun new RubberZone video in the works which should be out next weekend, and plans for new shoots in new settings later this month. We hope that you will enjoy seeing it, and that we can go back to thinking about what matters: Skin-tight latex, heavy black rubber, bondage, and living a life in gear with other Rubbermen.

- Squirm and Stomper