The Sex.com Story

[Sound]

Time - 23:05 - 00:05

Channel 5 Wednesday

Documentary charting the early days of internet pornography and following what happened when the lucrative sex.com domain name - the most valuable in the world - was stolen from its owner Gary Kremen by Stephen Michael Cohen, a conman who went on to make millions of dollars from the site.

 

[charlie]

watching now thanks

taking notes

 

[Paullas]

.

crap, didnt actually tell you anything.

 

[charlie]

i liked it - i have hundreds of hand written letters to send to nominet saying

could you please change the NS on this domain, i would do it normally but "i don’t have a connection to the internet"

I would have liked them to go into how they made the money a bit more (800,000 a month sounds good to me!) but the guy did a runner before the court got to this bit. It was interesting to hear how these sites pioneered features such as celebrity and affiliate marketing.
You have to admit that the sex domains are the forefront of commercial technology I thought it was interesting to see where they all started from.

I particularly liked the fact that the domain was registered for free way back when!!

 

[Paullas]

.

happy you found it interesting, maybe i was a bit off sorry ( bad day ).
i just found it promoting the sex industry and not actually telling you the details which i was hoping for.

 

[charlie]

i just found it promoting the sex industry and not actually telling you the details which i was hoping for.

no your right - this was the basis of the program, it was for the general public (sex sells) I'd like to see something investigating the domain industry would be interesting to see what conclusions they come to

 

[ELIFE-MZ]

Another twist in the saga.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/10/28/sexdotcom_cohen_arrested/

 

[ELIFE-MZ]

Sex.com sells for $14m

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/01/19/domain_sold/

 

[olebean]

Kinda cool huh $14 million !!

 

[charlie]

i think hustler will pay £30 for a sex story?



14M impressive but understandable when -

"...the pornography industry in the United States earns revenues of over $10 billion annually. Of that amount, it is possible that up to $2 billion is spent on porn Web sites, with steady growth forecast"
hxxp://www.caslon.com.au/xcontentprofile.htm

 

[texidriver]

But they do not "own" it they are just renting it
a WIPO decision could just take it away anytime!

in this case someone paid $25,000 for a domain, then had it taken away

http://arbiter.wipo.int/domains/decisions/html/2005/d2005-1050.html

the word sex is trademarked in the US
and there is an application for a trademark on sex.com dated 1996

!?

 

[charlie]

they are paying for the first refusal on the $30 renewal fee and the rights to use/trade through/using that domain name (thats probably not right legally!) but you get the idea

 

[texidriver]

"Kremen sold Sex.com to Escom for $14m on Wednesday but retains the technology he has built behind it since November 2000, plus a trademark for the name Sex.com."

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/01/20/sex_com_fight_continues/