SARASOTA, Fla. — WebGroup Czech Republic (WGCZ), the parent company of XVideos, XNXX, BangBros and GirlsGoneWild, has settled a lawsuit filed by the state of Florida over those sites’ alleged failure to age-verify Florida users before allowing access to adult content.
The settlement requires WGCZ to implement age verification on its sites and to pay $1.2 million to Florida’s Department of Legal Affairs.
As XBIZ reported last year, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier filed the lawsuit with the 12th Judicial Circuit Court of Florida against WGCZ, which operates XVideos.com, as well as against WGCZ subsidiaries NKL Associates, which operates XNXX.com; Sonesta Technologies, which operates BangBros.com; GGW Group, which operates GirlsGoneWild.com; and Traffic F, which operates TrafficFactory.com.
The complaint stated that the AG sought “to compel the pornographers to comply with their obligations under Florida’s age-verification law” and contended that each “knowing and intentional” violation of Florida’s AV rules constituted an “unfair and deceptive trade practice” under the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act.
Under the settlement, WGCZ sites may rely on users’ IP addresses to determine whether they are located in Florida. That provision holds for five years — a limit likely included due to frequent circumvention of geolocation by users using VPNs, a workaround that various U.S. states and other countries are seeking to address via legal and technological means.
