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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   15641 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 10, 2026

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Once you strip away all the culture war nonsense surrounding the law itself, this plays out just like any other case.

Yes. I'm not making the argument that someone's 'violating the law', and whatever extent it'd be even arguably true is marginal. I'm showing that the law is an ass.

If Kick had been shipping arsenic-coated children's toys to Texas and then not shown up for the resultant lawsuit, the result would have been similar, and we could all agree Kick deserved it. But the culture war nonsense on top makes the comparison to deadly poison runs into trouble in this specific case, and.

And the 'the law lets you do this' argument generalizes to nearly everything.

In fact, there's a few arguments they could have made that have nothing to do with the validity of the statute.

Would you like to propose one that you believe would survive minimal scrutiny?

I'm not saying that she would have necessarily ruled in their favor, but not all judges are shills.

That's a wonderful strawman you've knocked down, but it's not my argument.

But I doubt they're too indigent to fight this. Yes, taking it to the mat would be expensive, but unless they're true believers, they'll settle.

Not too indigent to "fight this" and anyone sane settling doesn't really have good overlap, but even if it's plausible for this particular vendor, it's unlikely to be true for every use case, or even a large portion. There was a big snafu in the furry fandom a couple years ago when the owner-operator of FurAffinity passed away surprisingly young... and couldn't manage health insurance, nevermind legal protections.

There are approximately 10 million porn sites that aren't complying with the Texas law, Kick is hardly the biggest, and the AG does not have unlimited resources. In a normal world, this case ends with a deal that probably has the AG agreeing to waive the penalties in exchange for Kick agreeing to comply by a date certain.

Texas has brought suits against Aylo Global, Hammy Media, and Multi Media LLC. Multi Media ended up agreeing to comply... and pay 650k. Which, fair, is less than 9 million! Also not the sort of cash even many businesses have in their bank account. Those are the ones Texas publicized.

It's ... not clear what, if any, other lawsuits are going on: Kick's own situation didn't get much publicity until the DNS takedown request. And the broader set of litigation threats, without filing, is invisible, since they don't show up on the public docket and I think can't even be searched under Texas's FOIA equivalent.

You are right to say that Texas can't bring lawsuits against every single porn company on the planet. Ignoring for now the fun question of private rights of action that the statute authorizes, that's little succor to the companies and persons you're asking to play russian roulette with someone else's gun.

But as a civil defense attorney I can tell you that 100% of clients think that 100% of the suits filed against them are complete bullshit, even sophisticated corporate clients, even when the claims are beyond reasonable, and approximately 100% of them settle anyway. Because it turns out that $10,000 to settle the case is a lot less than the $10,000/day they'll owe if they don't settle.

Yes, the law is an ass, we've established tools to encourage shakedowns of random orgs, what's new?

Well, the culture war bullshit is new. And it's not going to stop here.

For another example where Texas has a hundred thousand dollar fine available and already adjudicated, AidAccess isn't a .com... but it's a .org. Managed in Virginia. They, at least, shipped something. Florida and California do have their army of ADA testers already; how much do you think it would take to start up an NGO, support an intentionally (rather than accidentally) impossible-to-comply-with state version, self-fund by shaking down businesses, and then spend the excess absolutely murking rando websites that don't match the org's preferences?

You don't have to think very hard about this stuff, to find dangerous weapons.

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