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Texas wins court order to suspend domain name for violating age-verification law

texasattorneygeneral.gov

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Re: Texas wins court order to suspend domain name for violating age-verification law

#21

Post by Dylan16807 »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #4
BobbyTables2 wrote: post #2

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.)

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. https://www.…

> 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.

Re: Texas wins court order to suspend domain name for violating age-verification law

#22

Post by ActorNightly »

ofewfewhw wrote: post #8

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.

[flagged]

Re: Texas wins court order to suspend domain name for violating age-verification law

#23

Post by BLKNSLVR »

BobbyTables2 wrote: post #2

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.)

> 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...

Re: Texas wins court order to suspend domain name for violating age-verification law

#24

Post by reactordev »

EmbarrassedHelp wrote: post #15
jerrythegerbil wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://dnschecker.org/#A/motherless.com

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.

The US court system is completely hamstrung by the current administration.

Re: Texas wins court order to suspend domain name for violating age-verification law

#25

Post by paxys »

ofewfewhw wrote: post #8

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.

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.

Re: Texas wins court order to suspend domain name for violating age-verification law

#26

Post by 15155 »

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #23
BobbyTables2 wrote: post #2

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.)

> 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 wh…

> 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.

Re: Texas wins court order to suspend domain name for violating age-verification law

#27

Post by applfanboysbgon »

EmbarrassedHelp wrote: post #15
jerrythegerbil wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://dnschecker.org/#A/motherless.com

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.

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.

Re: Texas wins court order to suspend domain name for violating age-verification law

#29

Post by BLKNSLVR »

15155 wrote: post #26
BLKNSLVR wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 wh…

> 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.

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.

Re: Texas wins court order to suspend domain name for violating age-verification law

#30

Post by randbyte »

what wrote: post #19
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verisign (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.

Texas isn’t the US government?

When people say “US government” they usually mean the federal government…
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