Yes, Texas courts may indeed be starting to follow the federal Twombly/Iqbal doctrine in view of a statutory change a couple of years ago. Recently, in a similar case, GoDaddy.com successfully persuaded a state appellate court to overturn a trial court's refusal to dismiss the plaintiff's complaint on that ground [1].
[1] http://www.jonesday.com/godaddycom-llc-v-toups-a-texas-appel...
That seems pretty outrageous.
Furthermore, the Tor network is not moderated, nor managed by the Tor project. The Tor project is more-or-less unrelated to the Tor network, and it certainly does not provide any "services" to users. The Tor Project is literally a software project, not a service or platform.
The Tor project simply develops on and provides the Tor core library, from which, other users have taken and made products like TorBrowser.
I guess if the TOR network went around and randomly blew up machines that connected over it that would be different...
Simply suing them because someone used the TOR network to hide their website is absolutely ridiculous.
> The Tor project simply develops on and provides the Tor core library, from which, other users have taken and made products like TorBrowser.
Note that this is not exactly true: Tor Browser is developed by the Tor Project (developed by tp.o's (the organization at torproject.org, which is incorporated as "Tor Project") people.)
At least my take on it is that the core network daemon "tor" is one of the things that tp.o people develop, but it's not the only thing/program.
Some of the programs developed and maintained by people who are tp.o developers: https://www.torproject.org/projects/projects.html.en
These and others comprise the broader ecosystem of Tor software. Many of the programs are (to use your word) (for all intents and purposes) "managed" by Tor Project (not only the core daemon.)
I'm not familiar with Texas civil procedure, but assuming they follow the federal rules on this point, the complaint as to Tor is probably underspecified. In a complaint, a plaintiff does not have to make out her full factual case, but does need to make sufficient factual allegations to raise a cognizable claim.
To make out a case for civil conspiracy in Texas, you have to show: 1) a combination of two or more persons; 2) an unlawful purpose; 3) a meeting of minds as to the purpose; 4) one or more overt, unlawful, acts; 5) damages.[1]
The plaintiff here alleges that Pinkmeth and Tor had a "meeting of the minds" but it is insufficient to simply parrot one of the elements of the claim. The plaintiff must allege "enough facts to state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face." Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 570 (2007). For example, the plaintiff must allege that someone affiliated with the Tor project provided Pinkmeth with technical support, from which we might infer a "meeting of the minds" as to the unlawful purpose. If the plaintiff can't make such an allegation, the complaint is probably going to get dismissed as to Tor.
[1] http://www.texas-opinions.com/law-civil-conspiracy.html