Texas AG Ken Paxton Sues Porn Companies for Violating State’s Age-Verification Law

Photo by Philipp Katzenberger/Unsplash

The attorney general of Texas has filed lawsuits against two companies that operate pornographic platforms.

On Friday, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, released a statement, announcing his office had filed lawsuits against Multi Media, LLC, and Hammy Media, the two companies that operate the pornography sites.

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Paxton argued in his legal complaints the two parent companies had violated H.B. 1181, a state law requiring age-verification measures to be put in place to block minors from accessing the sites.

The attorney general’s office filed the suits against Hammy Media and Multi Media, LLC, on Tuesday. In the filings, they asked the judge to issue an order finding the companies are actively violating state law and enjoining them from “online publication or distribution of sexual material harmful to minors without implementing reasonable age verification methods.”

Furthermore, the legal complaints seek to impose civil penalties of $10,000 per day for every day the companies continue to violate the state law protecting minors from illicit content. The total penalties against Multi Media, LLC, amounted to $1,780,000 and $1,670,000 for Hammy Media.

It’s worth noting that, according to MySA, xHamster blocked Texas users and Chaturbate added an apparatus requiring visitors to provide a driver’s license before gaining access to the site. Those actions were taken in response to the lawsuits filed by Paxton.

Referring to other litigation against similar platforms, the attorney general said Pornhub — the world’s largest pornography platform — has “disabled its website in Texas.”

“Sites like Pornhub are on the run because Texas has a law that aims to prevent them from showing harmful, obscene material to children,” he said. “In Texas, companies cannot get away with showing porn to children. If they don’t want to comply, they should leave Texas.”

Pornhub has taken similar action in other states with age-verification laws.

Paxton has vowed to “aggressively enforce” H.B. 1181 and warned “all pornography companies lacking proper age verification safeguards on their sites should consider themselves on notice, because they’re violating Texas law.”

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