A Brief History of 'sex.com'

linuxwrangler writes "Violet Blue's current 'Open Source Sex' column in SFGate covers the amusingly sordid history of sex.com. More graft and corruption than hanky-panky, the article details some of the exploits surrounding the much-desired URL, including an attempted assassination, drug smuggling, money laundering, and a bid to buy out Ceasar's Palace. From the article: 'It's estimated that Cohen made over $100 million off the URL in the years he had it, even making a 1999 bid to buy Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, and was only forced to give it back to Kremen when a San Jose court awarded the URL (and $65 million in damages) to Kremen in 2001. It had been a five-year struggle for Kremen, both in battling his speed addiction and in trying to raise funds for his own litigation. Even though his dot-com boom resume boasted typical startup-style impressive credentials, Kremen was only able to afford the court bills when bitter Sex.com porn industry rivals helped fund the case.'

Comments

Rubber Alligator

[omeomi]

The only thing missing from the Sex.com story is a dead stripper found with a rubber alligator lodged in her throat

Well, that seems easy enough to fix...

Now, where to find a rubber alligator...

Social engineering

[Life700MB]

Ah, score another for the good old social engineering that made it posible to obtain the domain without having the rigts to it.

--
Superb hosting 200GB Storage, 2_TB_ bandwidth, php, mysql, ssh, $7.95

Re:Social engineering

[Joebert]

Social Engineering ? To obtain Sex ? Say it isn't so !

Re:Social engineering

[Cheapy]

Usually it's called "beer"....

Re:Social engineering

[mmkkbb]

For crying out loud mods! It's called a "pick-up line". Beer is not social engineering.

Re:slow day???

[Arcane_Rhino]

Nonsense. I wish I had the movie rights.

What about whitehouse.gov??

[filesiteguy]

I find this all very interesting. However, I'm wondering if there's a similar tale behind the owners of whitehouse.gov - the other hot pr0n site on the internet.

Re:What about whitehouse.gov??

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm wondering if there's a similar tale behind the owners of whitehouse.gov - the other hot pr0n site on the internet

If you feel that whitehouse.gov is the hottest porn site on the Internet, you sir are the biggest GW Bush fan I've ever met. You win, hands down.

Re:What about whitehouse.gov??

[BacOs]

They're referring to whitehouse.com, which used to be a porn site.

Re:What about whitehouse.gov??

[CaffeineAddict2001]

Oh come on: CONDIE RICE. Raaawr! What? None of you find power sexy?

Re:What about whitehouse.gov??

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd bang her.

Good premise, terrible writing, bleh credentials

[ObiWonKanblomi]

Did Cohen really share a cell with Michael Milken or did he stay at the same prison but at different times? I'd be more interested in reading about that if he did actually share the same cell.

Also, this author's credentials sound like something that could only qualify someone for work in San Francisco:

Violet Blue is author and editor of over a dozen sexual health books and erotica collections. She is a professional sex educator, lecturer, podcaster, video blogger, porn/erotica reviewer and machine artist. Violet is also a fetish model, a member of Survival Research Labs, an author at Metroblogging San Francisco; girl friday contributor at Fleshbot, a San Francisco native, and a pro blogger. For more information and links to Web sites discussed in Open Source Sex, go to Violet Blue's Web site, tinynibbles.com.

Please tell me I live in a sane world when I say even Dvorak or Cringley has better credentials.

It was a long, hard case...

[Cr0w T. Trollbot]

..but Gary Kreman kept pounding, pounding away, thrusting again and again into the slippery corridors of justice. It was sweaty working penetrating the tight holes of legal precedence necessary for him to release his load of depositions, a sticky, exhausting process. But he prevailed! A model for us all...

Crow T. Trollbot

Re:It was a long, hard case...

[Lord Kano]

Then the judge pulled out his law books and sprayed justice in everyone's face.

LK

just make sure...

[advocate_one]

you type it right... oh see what you get for only being one letter out...

Appropriate google ads?

[Pedahzur]

Am I the only one that finds these google ads at the bottom of that article to be apropos:

Sex Offender Registry
Search updated sex offender list Free service with maps, easy to use
----------------.org

Registered Sex Offenders
Protect your child. Find out now if a sex offender lives in your area.
www.---------------------.com

Instant Criminal Records
Nationwide Criminal, Felony & Sex Offender Checks. Updated Regularly.
www.--------.com

Sex.com belongs to all of us

[Paladin144]

Come on people, quit the fussin' and the fightin'. Put aside your differences. It's clear, that sex.com belongs to all of us, like the environment or the national debt. You see, sex.com is part of our heritage. It's the domain that is connected to every single one of us -- after all, who among us would be here if our parents didn't have sex? (okay, Cowboy Neal is a test tube baby, but the rest of us were created during sex)

Don't you see? Sex.com is our birthright! It's a national treasure. It is a god among TLDs. That's why I think we should make it public domain and put a wiki up there so we can all teach and share what we've learned about sex. Like the future, sex.com belongs to the children. The next time somebody mentions sex.com, think of the children!

Uhh... wait a sec...

Re:That article makes me brain hurtee

[Anonymous Coward]

tentacles slithering all over the planet, sliding into every nook, fold and crevasse

Nah, sex.com doesn't have that kind of porn

Re:Good premise, terrible writing, bleh credential

[Biff Stu]

While I'm not a huge fan of her style, I must say that she writes a sex column; her crededentials are appropriate and well-suited for the job. On the other hand, the thought of associating Dvorak or Cringley with sex makes me run in terror.

Money

[Lord_Dweomer]

Just out of curiosity, how is it that he made that much freaking money off of a domain name? I'm sure he had ads and affiliate stuff all over the place but how in the hell did he make THAT much, it seems WAAAY more than he should have been able to make.

Can any adult webmasters weigh in on the amounts of money to be made in your business? How much would you say your "average" pr0n site pulls in? What amount of traffic is required for that?

Re:Money

[owlnation]

It was easier to make lots of money in porn at the beginning of the web. For those of us who entered the marker later it's actually pretty tough, you need to do all the work that every other site is doing, adult or otherwise, to make money. And no, not even in that order of magnitude amount - if you are doing things legitimately an least - as I endeavor to do. Maybe if you are doing things illegally you can make much more, but that's not for me, I'd rather settle for a reasonable income and be able to sleep at night.

I have few friends who did start up at the beginning of the web, and sure they are pretty rich, but they didn't make anything like that kind of money. Either this guy is really good, or (likely) there's still more to the story to be told.

Re:Money

[Anonymous Coward]

Top affiliate schemes these days pay $40-$60 per signup for a $3 trial. These convert at around 1:1000 for properly niched/setup sites.
For some actual figures from legit guys - http://www.hoes.com/sponsors/
This shows that traffic to the standard top programs will run at about 5c/hit today, which is about right. In 2004 it was more like 10c a hit. The market is flooded these days. Back in the sex.com battle days it was even more.

sex.com falls in the top 1000 traffic sites overall, which you can imagine the number of hits we are talking there. Subtract a decent chunk of conversion ratio for the weaker traffic (sex.com visitors are not going to be as determined porn surfers as hoes.com, a lot more casual hits), and you are still probably talking 1c a hit. For, lets say, 6m hits a day, $60,000 a day == 21 million a year. Sounds in the right ballpark?

It would only be a good porn domain...

[Krater76]

... if you could type it with one hand.