KANSAS CITY, Kan. — The plaintiff in a lawsuit alleging that cam platform Chaturbate violated Kansas’ age verification law has voluntarily dismissed that action, while retooling a similar complaint against adult site SuperPorn.
As XBIZ reported last year, the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE), a conservative anti-pornography organization, brought lawsuits against four adult sites on behalf of a 14-year-old Kansas resident and their mother. The suits alleged that the teen accessed content on the sites without their age being verified.
Last month, a federal judge dismissed two of the suits, citing lack of jurisdiction. That decision could still be appealed.
A third case targeted Multi Media LLC, which operates Chaturbate. In that case, the judge last month granted the defendant’s motion to compel arbitration and stayed the case pending the arbitration’s outcome. On March 4, however, the plaintiff filed a notice of dismissal, ending the action.
The fourth case originally targeted Techpump Solutions SL, which the complaint identified as the operator of SuperPorn.com. Last week, the plaintiff filed an amended complaint, this one identifying Pump Lab SL as the site’s new owner and operator.
The new complaint deploys updated arguments for establishing jurisdiction. In one of the cases that was dismissed, the judge ruled that the plaintiff failed to show that the website in question “purposefully directed its activities at Kansas.” According to industry attorney Corey Silverstein, the new complaint attempts to address that failure.
"The new complaint is trying to do more than say, 'A Kansan could reach the site,'" Silverstein told XBIZ. "It is trying to say, 'This company specifically aimed parts of its business at Kansas' — through geotargeting, curated U.S. content, regional content delivery, cookies and ad monetization tied to Kansas users. In plain English, the plaintiff is no longer arguing that the website was merely on the internet; the plaintiff is arguing that the company was steering the website into Kansas on purpose."
Whether this new approach is likely to establish jurisdiction in the case, as the dismissed complaints did not, will likely turn on proof, not rhetoric, Silverstein added.
"This is a smarter and more developed jurisdictional theory than the one the judge already rejected, because it tries to answer the court’s central concern: Where is the evidence of deliberate targeting of Kansas itself?" Silverstein explains. "If the plaintiff can back up the allegations that the defendant actually selected regional CDN points, knowingly used geolocation tied to Kansas and commercially exploited Kansas users in a state-specific way, the argument is stronger."
On the other hand, Silverstein noted, if those allegations turn out to be just another version of "The site was generally available online and happened to be used in Kansas," then the court may well reject it again.
Meanwhile, the state of Kansas itself is suing SARJ LLC, alleging that the company’s adult websites — including metart.com, sexart.com and vivthomas.com — have failed to implement age verification as mandated by state law. SARJ has claimed that the jurisdiction issue that resulted in dismissal of the two NCOSE-backed suits applies to its case as well. However, it remains to be seen whether the court will apply the same jurisprudence to a suit brought by the state, or whether the plaintiff in those cases will appeal their dismissal.
The Free Speech Coalition hailed last month’s dismissals as “an important victory against state laws enforced by private rights of action,” but encouraged FSC members to comply with all applicable laws.
