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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

#101

Post by walrus01 »

jasonfarnon wrote: post #95
walrus01 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is known to have servers, offices, employees, bank accounts, business licenses in texas?

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.

> 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?

https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=uganda+an...

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

#102

Post by gamblor956 »

msftgreed wrote: post #34

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 ju…

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.

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

#103

Post by profmonocle »

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.

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...

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

#104

Post by jasonfarnon »

AdieuToLogic wrote: post #92
jasonfarnon wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> Of course it has business operations in TX. It does not, as explicitly stated in the court's decision found here[0]. https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/sites/default/files/ima...

You're going to have give us the "explicit" quotation, because that link is to a decision in favor of the state.

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

#105

Post by skillina »

15155 wrote: post #33
BLKNSLVR wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 proceedin…

> 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.

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

#106

Post by applfanboysbgon »

jasonfarnon wrote: post #98
applfanboysbgon wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"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.

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?

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

#107

Post by [deleted] »

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?

[deleted]

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

#108

Post by profmonocle »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #100
monksy wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Today I learned that a foreign government operates in Texas. 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.

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.

A federal court, sure. But this was a state court ruling on a state law.

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

#109

Post by walrus01 »

thegrim33 wrote: post #99
walrus01 wrote: post #49

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 rev…

So, you feel the same about stuff like the GDPR then, right?

Answered below in same thread.
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