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Domain Name Sold for Millions
Luke PiWalker writes "The infamous and controversial domain Sex.com has officially been sold to Boston-based Escom LLC for a reported $14 million. Sex.com owner Gary Kremen was unavailable for comment, but a source from Kremen's company, Grant Media, told XBiz that sales for the famous domain name will still be handled through Grant Media's San Francisco offices. While other terms of the acquisition remain unknown, XBiz was able to locate information on the deal through a company called InternetRealEstate.com, which shares office space in Boston with Domain Name Acquisition Group (DNAG), a company that was involved in a lawsuit surrounding the Sex.com domain in September."
You are forgetting that Google uses domain names as one of the key factors of their search algorithm.
Well...it wouldn't even make the list on the Top 10: Most Expensive Divorce Settlements.
The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously.
There's some background on the domain name here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex.com
That is called Domain Hijacking. It is actually a common practice. It even happened to Sex.com
A guy named Gary Kremen was apparently one of the first cybersquatters in the early 90's when domains were free. A guy named Stephen Cohen then hijacked Sex.com, and Kremens sued him:
"In November 2000, at the end of a three-year legal battle, a federal judge ruled that Stephen Cohen had stolen the domain by forging a letter from Kremen's company to Network Solutions. Cohen was ordered to return Sex.com to Kremen and pay him $65 million in damages. (Cohen appealed, and in June of this year, the US Supreme Court declined to hear his case.) In the meantime, Cohen had fled the country, so all Kremen got as compensation was this California mansion and a derelict house on the US-Mexico border. Even so, Kremen figured he'd found his winning lottery ticket. Under Cohen, Sex.com had been taking in $500,000 a month selling banner ads to other online porn sites."
ZEN is a prime number in base-36
...And there's no link to sex.com in the story? Good grief.
qntm.org
It's just a trophy domain. Because it's too generic. Think about it, what service can you possibly sell there? I'm being serious. Sex is a highly specific thing with millions of "products", "choices". What would you expect to find at money.com or at drugs.com or at people.com? Nothing but a catch-all umbrella portal for other sites, so why go there and not directly to the specific flavour you're after, which is what a search engine is for anyway. Some poor sucker just paid 13,999,999 dollars too much for nothing useful.
A Trophy domain is exactly what you want. Pay for click banners, AdSense, and favorable linking practices net you, oh, $500,000 a month. It doesn't necessarily work under the old system, but it's a thriving internet business.
I'm surprised it took that long....
o m
Registrant:
Escom, LLC
ATTN: SEX.COM
c/o Network Solutions
P.O. Box 447
Herndon, VA. 20172-0447
Domain Name: SEX.COM
Administrative Contact, Technical Contact:
Escom, LLC d54ma69r6ze@networksolutionsprivateregistration.c
ATTN: SEX.COM
c/o Network Solutions
P.O. Box 447
Herndon, VA 20172-0447
570-708-8780
Record expires on 30-Nov-2015.
Record created on 18-Oct-1995.
Database last updated on 19-Jan-2006 10:45:31 EST.
Domain servers in listed order:
NS5.SEX.COM 198.87.233.72
NS6.SEX.COM 64.244.252.131
This listing is a Network Solutions Private Registration. Mail
correspondence to this address must be sent via USPS Express Mail(TM) or
USPS Certified Mail(R); all other mail will not be processed. Be sure to
include the registrant's domain name in the address.
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.