Texas wins court order to suspend domain name for violating age-verification law
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has secured a court order to force the domain registry Verisign to suspend the domain 'motherless.com'. The action follows the site's failure to comply with state age-verification laws regarding pornographic content.
Why it matters
This sets a significant legal precedent for state-level enforcement of age-verification laws by targeting domain infrastructure rather than just the website operators.
Attorney General Ken Paxton secured a landmark court order to cut off a pornographic website’s ability to operate under its domain name after the company failed to take measures to protect children from the harmful sexual content it published. This legal victory establishes a significant precedent for enforcing age-verification laws against non-compliant foreign operators.
In April 2024, Attorney General Paxton sued Kick Online Entertainment (“Kick”), the owner of the pornographic website motherless.com, for violating Texas’s age-verification law. He subsequently obtained a Default Judgment and Permanent Injunction requiring the company to stop publishing harmful sexual material to minors and implement reasonable age-verification measures. 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.
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