If you’ve got $1-million for a starting bid, and many millions more available, you could next week be the proud owner of the internet’s most fought-over domain name: sex.com.
The site’s ownership goes up for auction next week by DOM Partners LLC, a New Jersey lender that backed a 2006 purchase of the domain name for up to $14-million but which is now foreclosing on the loan.
The auction is scheduled for March 18 at the New York law firm Windels Marx Lane & Mittendorf LLP, according to legal notices. And there is good reason for the site to attract bidders: at one point, it was making at least $15 000 a day, according to a 2008 book, The Sex.com Chronicles by Charles Carreon.
Easily remembered names
In the late 1990s, internet domains used to change hands for stunning amounts: though sex.com sets the price record, others including fund.com ($10-million), porn.com ($9,5-million), business.com ($7,5-million) and diamonds.com ($7,5-million) proved how much value some investors saw in the visitor-attracting power of a simple, easily remembered name.
But in many cases those domains were sold before the rise of Google, whose search engine dominates internet navigation, and which assesses sites not by their names but by their reputations, as measured by the number of other sites that link to them. A search for “sex” on Google shows sex.com as the fourth result; the top result is a site first registered in 2000.
The auction is yet another twist in the history of sex.com, which has seen bizarre shenanigans between would-be rival owners including Mexican jails, international pursuits and accusations of hacking which Kieren McCarthy, the author of another book about the struggle for sex.com’s ownership, has called “a Trojan war for the digital age”.
War over domain name
That war began in October 1995, when Gary Kremen, who 18 months earlier had become the first person to register sex.com, noticed that he was no longer listed as its owner. An 11-year battle, sometimes legal, followed with Stephen Michael Cohen, who also claimed to be the owner, disputing Kremen’s ownership. It was finally settled in January 2006, when Kremen, having been declared the owner, sold the site to Escom LLC.
But Escom made the purchase with a loan from DOM Partners — and that has been in default for more than a year. “The loan was in default and DOM partners is foreclosing pursuant to its right under the security agreement,” DOM’s attorney, Scott Matthews, said. Attempts to reach Escom and sex.com for comment were not immediately successful.
But Richard Maltz, an auctioneer at Maltz Auctions who is running the sale, said on Monday there was considerable interest in it. “We don’t know who’s serious and who’s not, but prospective bidders need a $1-million certified cheque. It should be interesting.”
Maltz said his firm was arranging for potential buyers to also be able to bid online. It is not known whether Stephen Cohen will be among the bidders.
Kremen, meanwhile, has been successful away from sex.com, having set up match.com, the dating website, and is chief executive of Grant Media. – guardian.co.uk