Apparently, there’s a law firm in Kansas that’s using the state’s new age verification law to solicit potential clients to sue porn website owners. Kansas’s law (one of the strictest in the country) is designed so that any citizen, not just the state, can bring a lawsuit against a producer. The Kansas law allows for a minimum fine of $50,000 dollars against any website operator with a site accessible in Kansas that doesn’t have an age verification system in place. It seems some producers may have already received letters from the Kansas law firm demanding a settlement to avoid legal action. I can just imagine having to speak to one of these lawyers: “It would be a shame to find yourself embroiled in a big lawsuit. But hey, buddy, making a settlement would be a much wiser path, spare yourself all that scrutiny and embarrassment of being dragged into court with your weird fetish website, could ruin your life. Yeah, would really be a shame if something like that were to happen to you, wouldn’t it?”

If this kind of thing escalates, it’s possible it could reach a point where I may have to block my own website from showing up in states where I could conceivably get sued. Pornhub has already done that, and in those states, you have to use a VPN (virtual private network) to get around the block. Thankfully VPNs are pretty cheap. Ironically, many teenagers are already way more familiar with using VPNs than many adults are. It’s too early to say what traction these legal tactics will have, and of course there’s the big Supreme Court case coming up in January challenging Texas’s age verification law which could change everything (or not). More wait and see.