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

https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/news/releases/attorney-general-ken-paxton-secures-landmark-legal-victory-lock-pornographic-website-domain-and

82•letmevoteplease•2h ago

Comments

BobbyTables2•1h 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.)

jagged-chisel•1h ago

I think it remains to be seen whether Verisign follows through.

jerrythegerbil•1h ago

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

EmbarrassedHelp•1h ago

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•47m ago

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

applfanboysbgon•44m 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.

toomuchtodo•1h 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.

https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2026/03/world/expose-rape-as...

FAFO.

pixl97•1h ago

All fun and games till religions get in battles and shut down websites talking about gods and beliefs they don't like.

BobbyTables2•1h 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)

toomuchtodo•1h ago

All speech does not deserve the same protection, certainly not unlimited protection, says SCOTUS.

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_...

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF•1h ago

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.

what•57m ago

Texas isn’t the US government?

randbyte•41m ago

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

BobbyTables2•55m 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•4m 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."

Cpoll•1h 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.

BLKNSLVR•50m 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•46m 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•43m 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•39m 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.

comrade1234•40m 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•33m ago

I would think it only applies to named employees, right?

antonvs•6m ago

Even people with mothers shouldn't travel to Texas.

tailscaler2026•34m 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.

WhyNotHugo•33m 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.

throwaway81523•1h ago

The domain name is motherless.com if that's what you wanted to know. It's a porn site.

zzril•1h ago

More interesting would be the IP!

regecks•44m ago

You don't need it, they've migrated to motherless.xxx.

toomuchtodo•36m 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.

https://www.cnet.com/news/privacy/man-behind-xxx-domains-say...

gpm•28m ago

Also in the US - strange choice

Waterluvian•27m ago

I recognize the unusual name. They were also off recently due to a Dutch issue

https://www.cnn.com/2026/05/08/europe/porn-site-motherless-t...

ofewfewhw•1h 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•46m 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.

rblatz•1h 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.

trhway•39m 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.

walrus01•13m 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.

fwip•7m 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•4m 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.

throwatdem12311•

EmbarrassedHelp•1h 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.

tamimio•58m ago

So, what’s the safest domain tld that’s safe from all that craziness out there?

shitter•19m ago

.onion

msftgreed•39m 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.

ranguna•32m ago

I thought this was always the case?

But what people do instead is to disable access for people from that specific state.

TurdF3rguson•27m ago

It seems like it's pretty easy to comply. Pornhub and others don't have any problems complying with TX.

abraham•23m ago

According to this pornhub is blocked in 25 states including Texas.

https://mashable.com/article/pornhub-blocked-states-2025

Zak•12m ago

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).

charcircuit•34m 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.

walrus01•17m 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.

nadermx•7m 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.

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.

monksy•7m ago

This kills their operations in other states that do not have this.

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.

wolpoli•3m 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?

Kaiser nurses say AI, workplace surveillance are making their jobs, care worse

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

AWS: Inaccurate Estimated Billing Data – $1.7 billion

The Zilog Z80 has turned 50

Thanks HN for 15 years of support and helping me find my life's work

The Isomorphic Labs Drug Design Engine unlocks a new frontier beyond AlphaFold

Vāgdhenu: A Sanskrit Chanting TTS System

First atmosphere found on Earth-like planet in habitable zone of distant star

Learning a few things about running SQLite

Kimi K3, and what we can still learn from the pelican benchmark

Static search trees: 40x faster than binary search (2024)

Open Book Touch: open-source e-reader

Topcoat: The full full-stack framework for Rust

FAA lets Boeing sign off on 737 MAX, 787 airworthiness certificates again

Painting the sides of railroad rails white to reduce derailment

The state of open source AI

Show HN: A zoomable timeline of 4M Wikipedia events

"Disk Not Ejected Properly": What It Means

Frank Lloyd Wright’s first home

Lego building instructions through time

MoonBASIC: A modern BASIC for building 2D and 3D games

Lobste.rs is now running on SQLite

Show HN: Watch bots interact with an SSH honeypot in real time

Three ways people respond to a problem (other than solving it)

More Bounce to the Ounce

Designing emoji for the way we communicate today

AI Meets Cryptography 2: What AI Found in OpenVM's ZkVM

Manufact (YC S25) Is Hiring a Senior infra engineer to build the MCP cloud

Evidence of inconsistencies in evaluation process and selection of winners

TP-Link Kasa cameras leaked home GPS via unauthenticated UDP for 6 years

Kaiser nurses say AI, workplace surveillance are making their jobs, care worse

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

AWS: Inaccurate Estimated Billing Data – $1.7 billion

The Zilog Z80 has turned 50

Thanks HN for 15 years of support and helping me find my life's work

The Isomorphic Labs Drug Design Engine unlocks a new frontier beyond AlphaFold

Vāgdhenu: A Sanskrit Chanting TTS System

First atmosphere found on Earth-like planet in habitable zone of distant star

Learning a few things about running SQLite

Kimi K3, and what we can still learn from the pelican benchmark

Static search trees: 40x faster than binary search (2024)

Open Book Touch: open-source e-reader

Topcoat: The full full-stack framework for Rust

FAA lets Boeing sign off on 737 MAX, 787 airworthiness certificates again

Painting the sides of railroad rails white to reduce derailment

The state of open source AI

Show HN: A zoomable timeline of 4M Wikipedia events

"Disk Not Ejected Properly": What It Means

Frank Lloyd Wright’s first home

Lego building instructions through time

MoonBASIC: A modern BASIC for building 2D and 3D games

Lobste.rs is now running on SQLite

Show HN: Watch bots interact with an SSH honeypot in real time

Three ways people respond to a problem (other than solving it)

More Bounce to the Ounce

Designing emoji for the way we communicate today

AI Meets Cryptography 2: What AI Found in OpenVM's ZkVM

Manufact (YC S25) Is Hiring a Senior infra engineer to build the MCP cloud

Evidence of inconsistencies in evaluation process and selection of winners

TP-Link Kasa cameras leaked home GPS via unauthenticated UDP for 6 years

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

Comments