No. 15-3047 13 such by the distributor, invariably followed up by police visitations, in fact stopped the circulation of the listed publications.” Bantam Books, Inc. v. Sullivan, supra, 372 U.S. at 68. The court held the state’s “system of informal censorship” unconstitutional, pointing out that “though the Commission is limited to informal sanctions—the threat of invoking legal sanctions and other means of coercion, persuasion, and intimidation—the record amply demonstrates that the Commission deliberately set about to achieve the suppression of publications deemed ‘objectionable’ and succeeded in its aim.” Id. at 67. The distributor of the plaintiffs’ books, corresponding to the credit card companies in this case, received first from the Commission a written request for ”cooperation” and then “follow up” visits from police, corresponding to the follow-up calls promised in Sheriff Dart’s letter. Id. at 63, 68. The distributor bowed to the Commission’s demand “rather than face the possibility of some sort of a court action against ourselves, as well as the people that we supply.” Id at 63. That is like this case, yet the district court denied Backpage’s motion for a preliminary injunction that would have required Sheriff Dart to desist from attempting to intimidate, by threatening legal action against, companies that provide payment services to customers of Backpage. It might seem that large companies such as Visa and MasterCard would not knuckle under to a sheriff, even the sheriff of a very populous county. That might be true if they derived a very large part of their income from the company that he wanted them to boycott. But they don’t. Backpage’s monthly revenue from ”adult” ads was recently estimated at $9 million and its total revenue in 2014 at $135 million, whereas the combined net revenue of MasterCard and Visa in that year exceeded $22 billion. The revenue they derived

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