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walrus01 1 hours ago [-]
The idea that a state court in one particular state can enforce such an absurd law against a company that likely has no business operations or servers in the state is ridiculous. I don't care if you like the porn site in question or not, or condone or endorse its content. This is a slippery slope towards every regional tinpot dictator legislature attempting to censor the internet by having an entity's domain name revoked.
.com in particular has also been well proven over the past 5 to 10 years to be vulnerable to federal court orders to seize domains at the registrar level. That's not really anything new. It's a known risk for anyone building a corporate brand/identity around a specific .com domain name. What's new is this is being done from the state court level. (Edit: To be clear, in my opinion, a US State court completely lacks jurisdiction on this matter).
AdieuToLogic 59 minutes ago [-]
> The idea that a state court in one particular state can enforce such an absurd law against a company that likely has no business operations or servers in the state is ridiculous.
Two things of note regarding this.
First, note the office of origin: Texas Attorney General, which is currently occupied by Ken Paxton who is running for a tightly contested seat in the US Senate.
Second, a state court does not have jurisdiction beyond its borders for entities not operating within same.
> .com in particular has also been well proven over the past 5 to 10 years to be vulnerable to federal court orders to seize domains at the registrar level. ... What's new is this is being done from the state court level.
Which is why any attempt to enforce this ruling would be subject to removal to Federal court.
rootsudo 5 minutes ago [-]
And third, there was a default judgement.
I wonder what was the value of the domain on the open market, its quite a famous domain and probably had high lead generation..
But I agree with the parent comment.
This is so much state overstepping bounds and irony aside, so much for independence and rights by a state that proclaims personal agency comes first.
walrus01 1 minutes ago [-]
Personal agency comes first in Texas only as long as you're a white heterosexual christian man with conservative political beliefs.
otterley 2 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
thegrim33 49 minutes ago [-]
So, you feel the same about stuff like the GDPR then, right?
walrus01 43 minutes ago [-]
Answered below in same thread.
jasonfarnon 1 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
AdieuToLogic 53 minutes ago [-]
> Of course it has business operations in TX.
It does not, as explicitly stated in the court's decision found here[0].
You're going to have give us the "explicit" quotation, because that link is to a decision in favor of the state.
AdieuToLogic 26 minutes ago [-]
Two quotes from the writ filed support my position.
The court finds that the following domain name is
owned by Defendant ...
Defendant is not a resident of this state and is
a foreign corporation.
> You're going to have give us the "explicit" quotation ...
The aforementioned does so. Until and unless you can show how the Defendant has an established presence within the State of Texas, such that its jurisdiction is applicable, it is difficult for me to consider your position considered and/or informed.
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 35 minutes ago [-]
> You're going to have give us
To be fair, only some of "us" are unwilling to read a two-page document to be informed about a topic under discussion. The words you're looking for are "Defendant is not a resident of this state and is a foreign corporation."
jasonfarnon 30 minutes ago [-]
Nice try, that's not the same as not doing business in the state. Most businesses are incorporated in Delaware, they get sued in every state of the union.
walrus01 1 hours ago [-]
It is known to have servers, offices, employees, bank accounts, business licenses in texas?
Hosting out of the netherlands. Kick their owners are globally headquarted in Australia, their US operations are out of SFO, CA.
jasonfarnon 51 minutes ago [-]
Why do you think that is necessary for jurisdiction? It's doing business with TX customers every time it serves an ad to someone there. The law governing sufficient contacts for internet companies has been pretty well established since the 2000s.
walrus01 48 minutes ago [-]
> It's doing business with TX customers every time it serves an ad to someone there
By this same logic if my web server physically located in Canada, the USA or Iceland serves LGBTQ content to people in Uganda I should be held liable or dragged into a Ugandan court under some of Uganda's anti-LGBTQ laws?
Uganda would certainly issue a judgement against you. The difference would be their inability to enforce it because none of the relevant parts of the DNS operate in Uganda.
It's now well-established on the Internet that a court may force anyone in the path to enforce their decision. ISPs are regularly forced to block foreign websites, without any implication of liability on the ISP's part, simply because the ISP has the technical ability to block them and the court has the ability to enforce an order on the ISP. The same applies to the DNS, which is based in America. Thanks to Texas for publicizing this DNS vulnerability which must urgently be fixed.
jasonfarnon 42 minutes ago [-]
I'm not sure what your point is. Courts generally follow precedent, not your opinion about what is or isn't logical. Do you want me to explain to you the nature of extraterritorial jurisdiction, extradition treaties, etc., distinguishing your hypothetical from this case? I don't have a dog in this fight. If you really want to understand what's going on I would suggest you simply look up the complaint this AG filed, which will give the basis for jurisdiction, which the court evidently accepted.
walrus01 36 minutes ago [-]
There's also more than ample legal precedent that only the US federal government has the authority to regulate inter-state commerce, which is clearly what .COM is as an entity run by VeriSign, and internet traffic/telecommunications traffic that crosses state borders. There's such a vast body of law in telecom law that the federal government regulates long distance telecommunications traffic that I could paste citations to dozens of court cases going back 75 years. International internet traffic from an entity whose servers aren't in Texas isn't subject to Texas jurisdiction.
bmelton 1 hours ago [-]
How do you feel about GDPR?
walrus01 59 minutes ago [-]
I worry about it about as much as I worry about getting extradited to Thailand to face court for violating a law insulting the Thai king. I am unaware of even a single person of my nationality who has been extradited to Europe to face some kind of GDPR tribunal.
If I were running a business that had any operations or clients whatsoever in Europe my opinion on this topic would be different (in terms of legal liability to the corporation, and necessity of compliance to ensure ongoing revenue from European customers, etc), but I am not.
bmelton 53 minutes ago [-]
Thanks for the answer! It wasn't a gotcha, I was genuinely just curious.
applfanboysbgon 58 minutes ago [-]
The GDPR doesn't try to remove anything from the global internet. You're free to not serve your site in the EU. Texas is free to block sites in Texas. But Texas trying to remove the ability of Europeans to access European websites is a completely different matter.
jasonfarnon 49 minutes ago [-]
"But Texas trying to remove the ability of (for instance) Europeans to access websites is a completely different matter."
I fail to see the difference in principle from the federal government doing this for copyright violations.
applfanboysbgon 46 minutes ago [-]
There is no difference in principle. That is equally unacceptable.
There is a difference in kind, because it becomes impossible for the global internet to exist if thousands of local jurisdictions are being given their way, with conflicting local legislation resulting in global takedown when it is impossible to comply with two different jurisdictions. So this is noteworthy as an escalation of an already existing problem into an even worse direction.
---
Rate-limit edit:
> Which is why the Internet hasn't been global in a long time, and looks pretty different in China vs EU vs Russia.
China and Russia aren't part of the global internet because they have national firewalls and segregated themselves. The EU very much is, and with limited exceptions the internet doesn't look much different from the US, the EU, Japan, Canada, Australia, Mexico, Thailand, Brazil, or South Africa. It seems absurd to suggest that the internet isn't global when I'm in all likelihood talking to you from the opposite side of the world and this is the norm. And what is the point you're making? That we should embrace the China/Russia model and give not only every country but also every state/province/city its own Great Firewall?
jasonfarnon 7 minutes ago [-]
"That we should embrace the China/Russia model and give not only every country but also every state/province/city its own Great Firewall?"
I actually don't have much of an opinion about what it should be, I was only discussing this from a descriptive legal standpoint. My guess is what will happen is companies will voluntarily target their sites to different regions and different legal regimes (like many big US sites do for their foreign versions, or gambling sites do here). That's kind of what's happening here, Verisign is complying probably so they can still have the TX market.
jasonfarnon 35 minutes ago [-]
Which is why the Internet hasn't been global in a long time, and looks pretty different in China vs EU vs Russia.
walrus01 27 minutes ago [-]
The major architectural difference is that through enforcement of their own domestic legislation, China and Russia both force their ISPs to run all international internet traffic through certain choke points (chinese great firewall, russian "SORM" traffic interception boxes and similar).
Whereas this is for the most part not the scenario for major IP transit providers in Europe, the USA, Canada (top 50 by size CAIDA ASRank scale/scope ISPs ranked by ASN which are not Russian or chinese).
bmelton 54 minutes ago [-]
> The GDPR doesn't try to remove anything from the global internet
GDPR Article 17 expressly requires the removal of things from the global internet
> You're free to not serve your site in the EU
Geoblocking is functionally impossible
inigyou 23 minutes ago [-]
HN ignores GDPR, in particular Article 17, and it hasn't been taken down from the internet or even blocked in the EU.
sitharus 29 minutes ago [-]
GDPR Article 17 expressly requires the removal _of your personal data_ from the internet _upon your request_, which is very different from a US state trying to remove a website hosted in and run by a company incorporated in another country.
And geo blocking may be functionally impossible but the law cares about intent and actions, not if you prevented someone who used a VPN or lied about their location from using your service.
applfanboysbgon 52 minutes ago [-]
> GDPR Article 17 expressly requires the removal of things from the global internet
...as part of compliance with GDPR, if you choose to be compliant. Please name one instance of the EU suing and successfully removing an American website from the internet under this article, or any part of the GDPR? Considering we're talking about an actual case of the US seizing the domain of a European website, whataboutting a hypothetical with the GDPR which has never done the reverse despite being in force for 10 years is incredibly disingenuous.
---
Rate-limit edit:
> Are you saying that you don’t think that the GDPR text is written to apply outside of the EU, or that it does say that but it’s not relevant because it’s not viable for anybody to enforce that?
The GDPR is European legislation, written for the territory the EU has legal jurisdiction over. Why would anybody think it's meant to apply outside of the EU? Plenty of businesses choose to operate by two sets of privacy policies, one where they continue fucking over their American users and one where they adhere to the GDPR for European users, and that is perfectly acceptable. There is no "think" about it, the legislation obviously does not apply outside the EU, nor is it intended to.
akerl_ 21 minutes ago [-]
Are you saying that you don’t think that the GDPR text is written to apply outside of the EU, or that it does say that but it’s not relevant because it’s not viable for anybody to enforce that?
monksy 1 hours ago [-]
This kills their operations in other states that do not have this.
Not sure how this does not violate interstate commerce.
BTW:
Kick - Melborne, AU. US Operations: SanFran CA.
Registar: Verisign - Reston, VA.
missingcolours 17 minutes ago [-]
Common complaint is that government enforcement of laws is insufficient, i.e. fines are only x% of their worldwide revenue. Sounds like this way has teeth and might force companies to actually obey the law?
rblatz 2 hours ago [-]
Default judgement, absolutely meaningless at this point as to how a court would rule against a plaintiff that actually showed up, respected the court’s authority, and defended itself.
walrus01 1 hours ago [-]
Why should a Netherlands based company that publishes content on the internet entirely outside of this state's borders and jurisdiction be required to show up or respect its authority? By this logic if I'm sued in Turkey for publishing content on my web server hosted in California insulting Erdogan, I should have to go show up and defend myself in some kangaroo court.
59 minutes ago [-]
fwip 1 hours ago [-]
If you want to keep the domain name you got from a TLD that they control, yes.
Or did you mean, like, morally?
walrus01 1 hours ago [-]
But does a US State control a TLD, really? Is that even something that's within the legitimate legal power of an individual state? Previous .com seizures have been done at the federal court level. The federal government reserves the authority to regulate all inter-state commerce. The entire history of how the .com TLD is run by Verisign is federal government related.
Doing this at the state court level is as nonsensical as an individual state deciding it doesn't like a law or regulation that's part of the jurisdiction of the FAA or FCC, and wants to do its own unique weird local thing.
calvinmorrison 9 minutes ago [-]
Any state can issue a warrant and extradite Americans from any other state. Something to do with catching runaway slaves. It's gonna catch up with us when California starts charging me with a crime for something about age verification or when Texas tries to extradite abortionists
walrus01 6 minutes ago [-]
Individual states have already been attempting to extradite people from other states for the crime of mailing early term abortion medication across state lines, for example:
So if I don’t do business in Texas, have no operations in Texas or otherwise deal with Texas in any way a state court should just be able to order a company to suspend my whole domain?
I’m Canadian and Texas courts have zero authority over me so they can f*ck off.
jzb 1 hours ago [-]
But they do have authority over the domain registrar, so you’re vulnerable there no matter where you live.
I don’t agree with the premise of age verification, but of course a prosecutor would go after the assets they can reach if enforcing local laws. They’ve done this for years when it comes to copyright infringement.
walrus01 50 minutes ago [-]
It's a huge overreach to say that any individual US state has authority over a domain registrar, and even more specifically over .COM as a TLD, given its history with VeriSign and the US federal government.
There exists a well defined process, precedent and prior case law in US federal court to seize a .COM domain name by a court order issued to VeriSign. Doing this at the state level is entirely new.
downrightmike 40 minutes ago [-]
They do not
1 hours ago [-]
trhway 2 hours ago [-]
That is the strategy - you start with the easy cases - somebody who wouldn’t or couldn’t defend themselves and who is “bad” in public perception.
wolpoli 1 hours ago [-]
Honest question: what is the ultimate end game if at some point a court in another country orders a domain be reinstated? Do we end up with a domain registration system per country?
walrus01 1 hours ago [-]
I think given the history and "ownership" of the specific TLD of .com by verisign and verisign's relationship with the US federal government, it then proceeds to ignore any court orders to reinstate the ownership issued by a court in any other country that is not the USA.
inigyou 19 minutes ago [-]
The winner of that battle will be wherever the DNS is hosted. Which is the USA. Even several ccTLDs are hosted in the USA and must obey USA law above the law of that country.
inigyou 1 hours ago [-]
We literally already have one of those. Each country has a .XX TLD, and all other TLDs are for the USA.
43 minutes ago [-]
earth-tattoo 6 minutes ago [-]
So, stage set to ban GrapheneOS website internationally?
throwaway81523 2 hours ago [-]
The domain name is motherless.com if that's what you wanted to know. It's a porn site.
Waterluvian 2 hours ago [-]
I recognize the unusual name. They were also off recently due to a Dutch issue
You don't need it, they've migrated to motherless.xxx.
toomuchtodo 2 hours ago [-]
> Stuart Lawley, the CEO of ICM Registry--the company behind the XXX top level domains, says XXX sites should help empower parents to keep their kids away from adult content.
Well that's kinda the whole idea of having an "adult content" tld; it's so you can block all .xxx domains instead of having to create a blocklist of sites. Like an opt-in nsfw flag for the internet, basically.
So basically this whole thing is a ploy to get rid of porn: basically, censorship that vaguely tries not to look like censorship.
1. Instigate a completely impractical, rights-violating scheme for age verification that nobody in their right mind wants to implement.
2. Then, enforce it against whatever porn sites land in your jurisdiction at all, knowing that they, like everyone else, don't do the verification.
Am I close?
Suppose the porn site tries to implement it. How many people are going to hand over their personal info to a shady porn site? Most visitors are there anonymously for whatever free stuff they can watch.
Either way, the porn site is ... screwed. Implement age verification: 99% visitors now back-button out and find another porn site. Don't implement it: blocked or shut down.
behringer 41 minutes ago [-]
The sooner the US loses control over the internet the better.
rocketpastsix 39 minutes ago [-]
you say this as you type it on an American-run website.
ButlerianJihad 40 minutes ago [-]
Just for clarity's sake, what is "the Internet", and how does "the United States" have "control" over it?
The USA controls ICANN and IANA, who together control the DNS root, as well as controlling all so-called "generic" TLDs through ICANN. Only some country TLDs are actually outside of US jurisdiction, as many of the delegate to USA-based registry providers. ICANN/IANA still control whether or not those countries even get to have domains, so the USA could decide that if the Netherlands wouldn't block motherless-dot-nl then .nl shall no longer exist.
DNS being centralised in the USA was potentially problematic when they weren't abusing their power. Now that they are actually abusing their power, it is actually problematic.
msftgreed 2 hours ago [-]
So a state (or municipality or anyone capable of making laws) has the ability to say, "You don't meet our local laws, take down your URL" now?
This is going to be a real problem when states start nuking whole parts of the internet from orbit. A state has a law against conversion therapy and starts to remove sites with that? A state has a law against trans people? Or abortion? Or medical misinformation? Suddenly we just start purging sites back and forth?
Battlegrounds end up as torn up, muddy, desolate places. Turning the domain registry into a battleground is a bad idea. Over the long term, no one wins if we choose to fight there.
inigyou 1 hours ago [-]
In the US, if you used a US domain or registrar, this is possible. If you are Dutch and registered a .nl domain with a Dutch registrar, this is not possible.
ranguna 2 hours ago [-]
I thought this was always the case?
But what people do instead is to disable access for people from that specific state.
kobalsky 1 hours ago [-]
I mean the US works like this, it isn't suprising a US state also does.
If someone from the US does something illegal on your site (which is legal in your country), depending on how much they want you will end up in a US prison.
Before the US decided that betting online was OK, betting sites had travel advisories for their employees not to travel to the US.
gamblor956 47 minutes ago [-]
This is a pretty clear violation of the First Amendment, but the current SCOTUS doesn't care about the Constitution.
Multiple conservative SCOTUS justices openly admit to taking bribes from parties with cases before them.
inigyou 18 minutes ago [-]
I believe the current precedent is that porn is not speech.
TurdF3rguson 2 hours ago [-]
It seems like it's pretty easy to comply. Pornhub and others don't have any problems complying with TX.
abraham 1 hours ago [-]
According to this pornhub is blocked in 25 states including Texas.
You wrote this in the passive voice; it doesn't say who is doing the blocking.
Pornhub itself is doing the blocking; it uses geolocation and denies services to IP addresses from jurisdictions with age verification laws. The laws are usually not structured so as to require a third party such as an ISP to block noncompliant sites; instead, the governments of the states with those laws can sue the porn sites and their service providers (Verisign in the case of .com domains).
abraham 16 minutes ago [-]
> You wrote this in the passive voice
I used the language of the link.
> The explicit tube site Pornhub is now blocked in 25 U.S. states
I had assumed that the states were blocking Pornhub but reading between the lines in the linked article it does imply it's not the states are not applying technical blocks.
TurdF3rguson 51 minutes ago [-]
Right, because they complied. Which was easy for them to do.
tamimio 2 hours ago [-]
So, what’s the safest domain tld that’s safe from all that craziness out there?
inigyou 57 minutes ago [-]
Your local country, provided that it is not crazy. Then you are only accountable to one country's jurisdiction.
DenisM 37 minutes ago [-]
Register two domains in different jurisdictions, with neither serving its own jurisdiction, and a redirect for stray users.
shitter 1 hours ago [-]
.onion
jmclnx 1 hours ago [-]
Well the site does not present Texas in a good light. Their .gov site presents me with this. Looks like they need to worry about their own site instead of worrying about out of state sites.
>Warning: Potential Security Risk Ahead
> Firefox detected a potential security threat and did not continue to www.texasattorneygeneral.gov. If you visit this site, attackers could try to steal information like your passwords, emails, or credit card details.
mjmas 33 minutes ago [-]
Perhaps you could take it up with your ISP or whoever is doing mitm?
charcircuit 2 hours ago [-]
I wonder when browsers will follow Brave's lead and support decentralized domains that can't be censored due to laws from half way across the world.
BobbyTables2 2 hours ago [-]
I don’t understand - was this site or company based in Texas?
Otherwise the general idea seems absurd that an individual state could freeze a domain impacting for the whole Internet…
(EDIT: I won’t lose any sleep at the loss of such scum but the general principle seems a bit strange.)
BLKNSLVR 2 hours ago [-]
> obtained a court-ordered writ directing Verisign, the company that maintains the “.com” domain registry, to place the domain “motherless.com” on a registry lock, hold, or similar status.
So they're using the fact that Verisign is a US company and can therefore be leaned on.
I'm not sure how I feel about this. What do other countries do who don't have Verisign to lean on? US companies really don't like being told what to do by governments of other countries, but when the shoe is on the other foot...
15155 2 hours ago [-]
> What do other countries do who don't have Verisign to lean on?
They lean on their ISPs, see Spain and the La Liga controversy.
BLKNSLVR 2 hours ago [-]
But that, more appropriately, only affects internet users in that country (ignoring the cloudflare network blocking that causes various other sites to also be blocked).
This appears to basically wipe the site from the entire internet, for all countries.
15155 2 hours ago [-]
When you create the infrastructure, you make the rules. If a party doesn't like those rules, they are free to create their own replacement infrastructure and obtain global buy-in.
ccTLDs already exist and their respective countries have sovereignty over those TLDs: the UK can disappear any .uk domain name it wants from the global internet.
The .com TLD is American, and is therefore subject to American legal proceedings.
walrus01 18 minutes ago [-]
> The .com TLD is American, and is therefore subject to American legal proceedings.
Ample precedent and prior case law exists that the US Federal government can obtain court orders to seize .COM domains. Going back 15 years now.
State government that's another question entirely. When people say "American legal proceedings", the distinction between state courts and federal courts have two very different regions of responsibility and authority.
1 hours ago [-]
skillina 46 minutes ago [-]
> The .com TLD is American, and is therefore subject too American legal proceedings
This is not an "American" proceeding so much as a Texan one, and it's not clear that the State of Texas should have any jurisdiction over the .com TLD.
wizcaps 1 hours ago [-]
I think you know how absurd it sounds to say in response “well you can go and create your own internet”
markdown 1 hours ago [-]
That's the correct way, because it applies only to residents of that jurisdiction. Texas should be able to prevent their local ISP's from showing illegal content, but not control what people see in other parts of the country/state.
comrade1234 2 hours ago [-]
It's not confusing and you should understand what's happening for your own safety. This has been happening for a couple of decades internationally and now with USA states.
This result means that Texas can take various means to block motherless. But more importantly no motherless employees should travel to Texas without risk of arrest. Same for abc/youtube/facebook employess traveling to India.
You should be aware of this and monitor it in your industry.
TurdF3rguson 2 hours ago [-]
I would think it only applies to named employees, right?
antonvs 1 hours ago [-]
Even people with mothers shouldn't travel to Texas.
gnabgib 1 hours ago [-]
> Even people with mothers shouldn't travel to Texas.
You know real, friendly, generous humans live in Texas, right?
clipsy 17 minutes ago [-]
Real, friendly, generous humans live in Haiti, too. That doesn't make it a good travel destination.
Pxtl 13 minutes ago [-]
I'm sure there are friendly and generous humans also living in North Korea and Iran. Doesn't mean I want to risk subjecting myself to their government's authority.
kibwen 33 minutes ago [-]
The friendly, generous humans who resoundingly endorse the corrupt Ken Paxton's actions and will overwhelmingly vote for him to serve them in the senate this year? Actions speak louder than words. With friends like Texans, who needs enemies?
Cpoll 2 hours ago [-]
> The Office of the Attorney General will continue to use every available legal mechanism, including writs of attachment against domain names, to enforce Texas law and ensure that no company, regardless of where it is incorporated, can profit from exposing Texas children to harmful content.
And Kick Online Entertainment S.A. appears to be incorporated in Luxembourg. The "S.A." is a mostly European thing, kind of like a "limited" company.
WhyNotHugo 2 hours ago [-]
> I won’t lose any sleep at the loss of such scum but the general principle seems a bit strange.
That's generally key in making a precedent. The first case is someone nobody really cares for, but it's built a precedent where the next case must follow suit.
> In March 2012, the U.S. government declared that it has the right to seize domains ending in .com, .net, .cc, .tv, .name, and .org if the companies administering the domains are based in the U.S. The U.S. government can seize the domains ending in .com, .net, .cc, .tv, and .name by serving a court-order on Verisign, which manages those domains.
BobbyTables2 2 hours ago [-]
Perhaps for violations of _federal_ law…
However, applying this for violations of _state_ law seems odd.
Where does it end?
What if a law enacted by a single US city’s city council is violated? Would US as a country seize the domain?
mapontosevenths 1 hours ago [-]
I'm gonna get a few people together and all run for city council so we can seize profitable domain names for ourselves.
"Sorry Meta, but BFE, Nebraska outlawed Farmville and now some guy named Bob owns facebook.com."
what 2 hours ago [-]
Texas isn’t the US government?
randbyte 2 hours ago [-]
When people say “US government” they usually mean the federal government…
what 56 minutes ago [-]
That was my point?
45 minutes ago [-]
TylerE 1 hours ago [-]
No more than the government of France is the EU government.
monksy 1 hours ago [-]
It's more like the government of Hungry or Bulgaria in the EU analogy.
inigyou 13 minutes ago [-]
It's more like Germany. Big, important, and corrupt.
jagged-chisel 2 hours ago [-]
I think it remains to be seen whether Verisign follows through.
So he managed to block the site globally for not forcibly violating the privacy of its users with mandatory age verification.
The US court system really needs to do something about this, and overturn Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton in favour of Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union.
reactordev 2 hours ago [-]
The US court system is completely hamstrung by the current administration.
inigyou 59 minutes ago [-]
Motherless shouldn't have used a domain under Texan jurisdiction if they didn't want this to happen.
applfanboysbgon 2 hours ago [-]
FWIW, the site isn't blocked globally. They just moved to a new domain.
I do generally agree that local governments trying to forcefully exert their influence beyond their jurisdiction is deeply problematic. It wouldn't even be possible to host a website on the internet if this becomes normalized, due to being held to thousands of contradicting standards. At most Texas should have the authority to tell Texas ISPs to block traffic.
tailscaler2026 2 hours ago [-]
> I won’t lose any sleep at the loss of such scum
Thank you for your virtue signaling. You're now registered as a lifetime GOP member.
toomuchtodo 2 hours ago [-]
It operates in Texas if it is serving Texas users.
> Kick Online, which openly describes itself as a “moral free” company, ignored the lawsuit and refused to comply with the court’s order. It continued publishing and distributing harmful sexual material that was accessible to minors in Texas.
This is the same website with a forum with millions of users trading information on how to assault their partner.
All fun and games till religions get in battles and shut down websites talking about gods and beliefs they don't like.
BobbyTables2 2 hours ago [-]
Indeed.
Does this mean Texas can shutdown other websites in other states that provide abortion support? I’m sure there are those who would argue such to be harmful to children…(not to mention the fetus)
walrus01 35 minutes ago [-]
They're already actively trying to prosecute people who mail medication across state lines.
inigyou 58 minutes ago [-]
Yes, it means exactly that.
monksy 1 hours ago [-]
Yes. With what they just did.
throwawaypath 1 hours ago [-]
>religions get in battles and shut down websites talking about gods and beliefs they don't like.
Leftists and trans activists attempting to shut down Kiwifarms comes to mind.
toomuchtodo 2 hours ago [-]
All speech does not deserve the same protection, certainly not unlimited protection, says SCOTUS.
Right, that's why speech by white Christians males should be protected, and not any of those Muslims or gay people.
Now, I say this mockingly, my neighbors (yes I live in Texas) say such things with a steadfast belief. Which is really weird to me because they keep electing adulterers and rapists.
fwip 1 hours ago [-]
I don't see the disconnect you do - they are voting for white Christian men to protect white Christian men. The rape and adultery was hurting women (or gay guys).
profmonocle 47 minutes ago [-]
> It operates in Texas if it is serving Texas users.
What do you mean "serves"? Does that just mean not actively blocking users from Texas? Allowing your web site to be accessible regardless of user location is, and always has been, the default way to run a web site. Your assertion would mean that web site operators are beholden to the laws of all jurisdictions on the planet if they don't actively block those users.
Think about what a bad precedent that would be. Some countries criminalize promotion of pro-LGBT+ content. What if those countries suddenly demand extradition of people who run pro-LGBT+ blogs because the web sites are available there?
Also, keep in mind that geolocation isn't actually part of the Internet - it's an overlay that private companies have cobbled together that usually works. But it's not perfect, especially at the subnational level. Many times I've connected to public Wi-Fi and I get an alert that I've signed into something from across the country, because that's where the Wi-Fi provider's IPs are located. Are you sure that every jurisdiction in the world will accept that if gelocation gets it wrong, you're off the hook? Utah has already claimed that companies are responsible for complying with their laws even if the user masks their location with VPN. https://www.privacyguides.org/news/2026/05/11/utah-targets-v...
monksy 1 hours ago [-]
Today I learned that a foreign government operates in Texas.
I wonder why they aren't being called out for anti-American terrorist groups.
toomuchtodo 48 minutes ago [-]
Not a .com domain, so out of reach. Anything within US reach, individuals or entities, is fair game from a US judicial system perspective.
Everyone learns this the hard way, it seems.
profmonocle 43 minutes ago [-]
A federal court, sure. But this was a state court ruling on a state law.
toomuchtodo 42 minutes ago [-]
My other comment in this thread has citations demonstrating SCOTUS support and approval for Texas to enforce these laws, as well as links to statue trackers showing where states and countries have implemented these age validation requirements for social media and adult content sites.
It was a choice by Motherless and their holding company, Kick Online, to egregiously ignore Texas law; the law has been found sound by the US Supreme Court, and enforceable by Texas. These are the facts of the situation. Everything else to discuss on this is feelings and opinion, unless there are relevant facts not yet shared or discovered.
> It operates in Texas if it is serving Texas users.
Then it's violating the laws of a whole lot of places by serving pornography to adults.
The existence of a web server doesn't feel like enough nexus to seize a domain.
EmbarrassedHelp 2 hours ago [-]
The problem is that Paxton is attempting to do the same thing to every site that doesn't forcibly violate user privacy with mandatory age verification. Its part of Project 2025 and the Heritage Foundations goals, and its incompatible with privacy rights.
what 1 hours ago [-]
> it operates in Texas if it is serving Texas users
Nonsense.
There is no reliable way to not serve your content to people in Texas. If anything, Texas should compel ISPs to not serve it to their Texas customers.
inigyou 12 minutes ago [-]
That's the point. Texas will argue that every website operates in Texas so they get to take down every website.
EmbarrassedHelp 2 hours ago [-]
There's no such thing as "reasonable age verification measures". Its lie spread by fascists like Ken Paxton, the Heritage Foundation, and ton of other evil people.
ofewfewhw 2 hours ago [-]
Definitely bad overall and opposed to the principle by which this is being done, but I am at least glad it happened to motherless. The last I saw of that site it had terrible moderation and hosted quite a bit of dubious material.
paxys 2 hours ago [-]
So it's bad but you're okay with it because it's being done to someone you don't like..
This is exactly how we lose all our rights.
ActorNightly 2 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
nadermx 1 hours ago [-]
I guess by default all .com's have US jurisdiction? Because even if it's a default judgment, and the registrar is based out of the US, which seems to the case here, any court order from the US is able to take a domain down.
The Ninth Circuit held that the U.S. court had jurisdiction to proceed because VeriSign—the registry for all .com domains—was located in the United States.
inigyou 56 minutes ago [-]
Every TLD that is not a ccTLD is effectively a US ccTLD. This has always been the case, and perhaps the US has tricked us into becoming complacent. If the world was fair they would all be underneath .us.
I want to see other countries start rejecting the ICANN root and forcing all the US domains under .us, but it will never happen. It would break their vhosts for one thing. Doing it at the browser level could avoid that.
.com in particular has also been well proven over the past 5 to 10 years to be vulnerable to federal court orders to seize domains at the registrar level. That's not really anything new. It's a known risk for anyone building a corporate brand/identity around a specific .com domain name. What's new is this is being done from the state court level. (Edit: To be clear, in my opinion, a US State court completely lacks jurisdiction on this matter).
Two things of note regarding this.
First, note the office of origin: Texas Attorney General, which is currently occupied by Ken Paxton who is running for a tightly contested seat in the US Senate.
Second, a state court does not have jurisdiction beyond its borders for entities not operating within same.
> .com in particular has also been well proven over the past 5 to 10 years to be vulnerable to federal court orders to seize domains at the registrar level. ... What's new is this is being done from the state court level.
Which is why any attempt to enforce this ruling would be subject to removal to Federal court.
I wonder what was the value of the domain on the open market, its quite a famous domain and probably had high lead generation..
But I agree with the parent comment.
This is so much state overstepping bounds and irony aside, so much for independence and rights by a state that proclaims personal agency comes first.
It does not, as explicitly stated in the court's decision found here[0].
https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/sites/default/files/ima...
The aforementioned does so. Until and unless you can show how the Defendant has an established presence within the State of Texas, such that its jurisdiction is applicable, it is difficult for me to consider your position considered and/or informed.
To be fair, only some of "us" are unwilling to read a two-page document to be informed about a topic under discussion. The words you're looking for are "Defendant is not a resident of this state and is a foreign corporation."
Hosting out of the netherlands. Kick their owners are globally headquarted in Australia, their US operations are out of SFO, CA.
By this same logic if my web server physically located in Canada, the USA or Iceland serves LGBTQ content to people in Uganda I should be held liable or dragged into a Ugandan court under some of Uganda's anti-LGBTQ laws?
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=uganda+an...
It's now well-established on the Internet that a court may force anyone in the path to enforce their decision. ISPs are regularly forced to block foreign websites, without any implication of liability on the ISP's part, simply because the ISP has the technical ability to block them and the court has the ability to enforce an order on the ISP. The same applies to the DNS, which is based in America. Thanks to Texas for publicizing this DNS vulnerability which must urgently be fixed.
If I were running a business that had any operations or clients whatsoever in Europe my opinion on this topic would be different (in terms of legal liability to the corporation, and necessity of compliance to ensure ongoing revenue from European customers, etc), but I am not.
I fail to see the difference in principle from the federal government doing this for copyright violations.
There is a difference in kind, because it becomes impossible for the global internet to exist if thousands of local jurisdictions are being given their way, with conflicting local legislation resulting in global takedown when it is impossible to comply with two different jurisdictions. So this is noteworthy as an escalation of an already existing problem into an even worse direction.
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Rate-limit edit:
> Which is why the Internet hasn't been global in a long time, and looks pretty different in China vs EU vs Russia.
China and Russia aren't part of the global internet because they have national firewalls and segregated themselves. The EU very much is, and with limited exceptions the internet doesn't look much different from the US, the EU, Japan, Canada, Australia, Mexico, Thailand, Brazil, or South Africa. It seems absurd to suggest that the internet isn't global when I'm in all likelihood talking to you from the opposite side of the world and this is the norm. And what is the point you're making? That we should embrace the China/Russia model and give not only every country but also every state/province/city its own Great Firewall?
I actually don't have much of an opinion about what it should be, I was only discussing this from a descriptive legal standpoint. My guess is what will happen is companies will voluntarily target their sites to different regions and different legal regimes (like many big US sites do for their foreign versions, or gambling sites do here). That's kind of what's happening here, Verisign is complying probably so they can still have the TX market.
Whereas this is for the most part not the scenario for major IP transit providers in Europe, the USA, Canada (top 50 by size CAIDA ASRank scale/scope ISPs ranked by ASN which are not Russian or chinese).
GDPR Article 17 expressly requires the removal of things from the global internet
> You're free to not serve your site in the EU
Geoblocking is functionally impossible
And geo blocking may be functionally impossible but the law cares about intent and actions, not if you prevented someone who used a VPN or lied about their location from using your service.
...as part of compliance with GDPR, if you choose to be compliant. Please name one instance of the EU suing and successfully removing an American website from the internet under this article, or any part of the GDPR? Considering we're talking about an actual case of the US seizing the domain of a European website, whataboutting a hypothetical with the GDPR which has never done the reverse despite being in force for 10 years is incredibly disingenuous.
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Rate-limit edit:
> Are you saying that you don’t think that the GDPR text is written to apply outside of the EU, or that it does say that but it’s not relevant because it’s not viable for anybody to enforce that?
The GDPR is European legislation, written for the territory the EU has legal jurisdiction over. Why would anybody think it's meant to apply outside of the EU? Plenty of businesses choose to operate by two sets of privacy policies, one where they continue fucking over their American users and one where they adhere to the GDPR for European users, and that is perfectly acceptable. There is no "think" about it, the legislation obviously does not apply outside the EU, nor is it intended to.
Not sure how this does not violate interstate commerce.
Contact your congress criter: https://www.congress.gov/
BTW: Kick - Melborne, AU. US Operations: SanFran CA. Registar: Verisign - Reston, VA.
Or did you mean, like, morally?
Doing this at the state court level is as nonsensical as an individual state deciding it doesn't like a law or regulation that's part of the jurisdiction of the FAA or FCC, and wants to do its own unique weird local thing.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=US+state+...
I’m Canadian and Texas courts have zero authority over me so they can f*ck off.
I don’t agree with the premise of age verification, but of course a prosecutor would go after the assets they can reach if enforcing local laws. They’ve done this for years when it comes to copyright infringement.
There exists a well defined process, precedent and prior case law in US federal court to seize a .COM domain name by a court order issued to VeriSign. Doing this at the state level is entirely new.
https://www.cnn.com/2026/05/08/europe/porn-site-motherless-t...
https://www.cnet.com/news/privacy/man-behind-xxx-domains-say...
1. Instigate a completely impractical, rights-violating scheme for age verification that nobody in their right mind wants to implement.
2. Then, enforce it against whatever porn sites land in your jurisdiction at all, knowing that they, like everyone else, don't do the verification.
Am I close?
Suppose the porn site tries to implement it. How many people are going to hand over their personal info to a shady porn site? Most visitors are there anonymously for whatever free stuff they can watch.
Either way, the porn site is ... screwed. Implement age verification: 99% visitors now back-button out and find another porn site. Don't implement it: blocked or shut down.
https://youtu.be/iDbyYGrswtg?si=AL91MHC5q5yg2jnA
DNS being centralised in the USA was potentially problematic when they weren't abusing their power. Now that they are actually abusing their power, it is actually problematic.
This is going to be a real problem when states start nuking whole parts of the internet from orbit. A state has a law against conversion therapy and starts to remove sites with that? A state has a law against trans people? Or abortion? Or medical misinformation? Suddenly we just start purging sites back and forth?
Battlegrounds end up as torn up, muddy, desolate places. Turning the domain registry into a battleground is a bad idea. Over the long term, no one wins if we choose to fight there.
But what people do instead is to disable access for people from that specific state.
If someone from the US does something illegal on your site (which is legal in your country), depending on how much they want you will end up in a US prison.
Before the US decided that betting online was OK, betting sites had travel advisories for their employees not to travel to the US.
Multiple conservative SCOTUS justices openly admit to taking bribes from parties with cases before them.
https://mashable.com/article/pornhub-blocked-states-2025
Pornhub itself is doing the blocking; it uses geolocation and denies services to IP addresses from jurisdictions with age verification laws. The laws are usually not structured so as to require a third party such as an ISP to block noncompliant sites; instead, the governments of the states with those laws can sue the porn sites and their service providers (Verisign in the case of .com domains).
I used the language of the link.
> The explicit tube site Pornhub is now blocked in 25 U.S. states
I had assumed that the states were blocking Pornhub but reading between the lines in the linked article it does imply it's not the states are not applying technical blocks.
>Warning: Potential Security Risk Ahead
> Firefox detected a potential security threat and did not continue to www.texasattorneygeneral.gov. If you visit this site, attackers could try to steal information like your passwords, emails, or credit card details.
Otherwise the general idea seems absurd that an individual state could freeze a domain impacting for the whole Internet…
(EDIT: I won’t lose any sleep at the loss of such scum but the general principle seems a bit strange.)
So they're using the fact that Verisign is a US company and can therefore be leaned on.
I'm not sure how I feel about this. What do other countries do who don't have Verisign to lean on? US companies really don't like being told what to do by governments of other countries, but when the shoe is on the other foot...
They lean on their ISPs, see Spain and the La Liga controversy.
This appears to basically wipe the site from the entire internet, for all countries.
ccTLDs already exist and their respective countries have sovereignty over those TLDs: the UK can disappear any .uk domain name it wants from the global internet.
The .com TLD is American, and is therefore subject to American legal proceedings.
Ample precedent and prior case law exists that the US Federal government can obtain court orders to seize .COM domains. Going back 15 years now.
State government that's another question entirely. When people say "American legal proceedings", the distinction between state courts and federal courts have two very different regions of responsibility and authority.
This is not an "American" proceeding so much as a Texan one, and it's not clear that the State of Texas should have any jurisdiction over the .com TLD.
This result means that Texas can take various means to block motherless. But more importantly no motherless employees should travel to Texas without risk of arrest. Same for abc/youtube/facebook employess traveling to India.
You should be aware of this and monitor it in your industry.
You know real, friendly, generous humans live in Texas, right?
And Kick Online Entertainment S.A. appears to be incorporated in Luxembourg. The "S.A." is a mostly European thing, kind of like a "limited" company.
That's generally key in making a precedent. The first case is someone nobody really cares for, but it's built a precedent where the next case must follow suit.
(Under "Controversies".)
> In March 2012, the U.S. government declared that it has the right to seize domains ending in .com, .net, .cc, .tv, .name, and .org if the companies administering the domains are based in the U.S. The U.S. government can seize the domains ending in .com, .net, .cc, .tv, and .name by serving a court-order on Verisign, which manages those domains.
However, applying this for violations of _state_ law seems odd.
Where does it end?
What if a law enacted by a single US city’s city council is violated? Would US as a country seize the domain?
"Sorry Meta, but BFE, Nebraska outlawed Farmville and now some guy named Bob owns facebook.com."
The US court system really needs to do something about this, and overturn Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton in favour of Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union.
I do generally agree that local governments trying to forcefully exert their influence beyond their jurisdiction is deeply problematic. It wouldn't even be possible to host a website on the internet if this becomes normalized, due to being held to thousands of contradicting standards. At most Texas should have the authority to tell Texas ISPs to block traffic.
Thank you for your virtue signaling. You're now registered as a lifetime GOP member.
> Kick Online, which openly describes itself as a “moral free” company, ignored the lawsuit and refused to comply with the court’s order. It continued publishing and distributing harmful sexual material that was accessible to minors in Texas.
This is the same website with a forum with millions of users trading information on how to assault their partner.
https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2026/03/world/expose-rape-as...
FAFO.
Does this mean Texas can shutdown other websites in other states that provide abortion support? I’m sure there are those who would argue such to be harmful to children…(not to mention the fetus)
Leftists and trans activists attempting to shut down Kiwifarms comes to mind.
Supreme Court allows Texas to enforce law requiring age verification and parental consent on apps - https://www.scotusblog.com/2026/07/supreme-court-allows-texa... - July 6th, 2026
Supreme Court allows Texas’ law on age-verification for pornography sites - https://www.scotusblog.com/2025/06/court-allows-texas-law-on... - June 27th, 2025
https://mashable.com/article/all-the-states-and-countries-wi...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media_age_verification_...
Now, I say this mockingly, my neighbors (yes I live in Texas) say such things with a steadfast belief. Which is really weird to me because they keep electing adulterers and rapists.
What do you mean "serves"? Does that just mean not actively blocking users from Texas? Allowing your web site to be accessible regardless of user location is, and always has been, the default way to run a web site. Your assertion would mean that web site operators are beholden to the laws of all jurisdictions on the planet if they don't actively block those users.
Think about what a bad precedent that would be. Some countries criminalize promotion of pro-LGBT+ content. What if those countries suddenly demand extradition of people who run pro-LGBT+ blogs because the web sites are available there?
Also, keep in mind that geolocation isn't actually part of the Internet - it's an overlay that private companies have cobbled together that usually works. But it's not perfect, especially at the subnational level. Many times I've connected to public Wi-Fi and I get an alert that I've signed into something from across the country, because that's where the Wi-Fi provider's IPs are located. Are you sure that every jurisdiction in the world will accept that if gelocation gets it wrong, you're off the hook? Utah has already claimed that companies are responsible for complying with their laws even if the user masks their location with VPN. https://www.privacyguides.org/news/2026/05/11/utah-targets-v...
I didn't know that Texas is supporting and promoting the North Korean government: http://naenara.com.kp/main/index/en/first
I wonder why they aren't being called out for anti-American terrorist groups.
Everyone learns this the hard way, it seems.
It was a choice by Motherless and their holding company, Kick Online, to egregiously ignore Texas law; the law has been found sound by the US Supreme Court, and enforceable by Texas. These are the facts of the situation. Everything else to discuss on this is feelings and opinion, unless there are relevant facts not yet shared or discovered.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48953591
Then it's violating the laws of a whole lot of places by serving pornography to adults.
The existence of a web server doesn't feel like enough nexus to seize a domain.
Nonsense.
There is no reliable way to not serve your content to people in Texas. If anything, Texas should compel ISPs to not serve it to their Texas customers.
This is exactly how we lose all our rights.
Found the case, https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca9/07...
The Ninth Circuit held that the U.S. court had jurisdiction to proceed because VeriSign—the registry for all .com domains—was located in the United States.
I want to see other countries start rejecting the ICANN root and forcing all the US domains under .us, but it will never happen. It would break their vhosts for one thing. Doing it at the browser level could avoid that.