BUSINESS
May 16, 2007 | Joseph Menn, Times Staff Writer
The free market has spoken: Sex is worth more than porn. That's one conclusion from the near record-breaking auction of an Internet domain name announced Tuesday. The rights to Porn.com brought in the second-highest payment for an address since the Web's creation, with closely held MXN Ltd. forking over $9.5 million. Not a bad return for a domain that sold for a reported $47,000 in 1997. But Porn.com couldn't command the payday of Sex.
BUSINESS
October 28, 2005 | Richard Marosi and Joseph Menn, Times Staff Writers
Four years after dodging a $65-million court judgment by fleeing the country, former online-porn mogul Stephen Michael Cohen was arrested by Mexican authorities in Tijuana and handed over Thursday to U.S. agents. Cohen, a multiple felon and longtime con man, had been on the run since before 2001, when a judge ordered him to pay a San Francisco entrepreneur for hijacking the Internet address Sex.com.
BUSINESS
April 21, 2004 | Joseph Menn, Times Staff Writer
A decade ago, in the World Wide Web's formative days, Gary Kremen registered "sex.com" with the company that keeps the rolls of the world's commercial domain names. One year later, a con man filched the rights, and Kremen set off on one of the Internet's longest-running legal battles. Now the lawsuit has been put to bed. VeriSign Inc. has agreed to settle Kremen's federal suit, the two sides said Tuesday. The Mountain View, Calif.
BUSINESS
September 4, 2002 | From Bloomberg News
A federal appeals court dismissed the appeal of a fugitive who lost a $65-million verdict last year over his theft of the lucrative Internet domain name www.sex.com. The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals action Friday affirms an April 2001 federal jury verdict ordering Stephen Cohen to pay the site's original and current owner, Gary Kremen, for acquiring the domain name through fraud. Kremen hasn't been able to collect the money from Cohen. He also is trying to sue VeriSign Inc.'
BUSINESS
June 10, 2003 | Laurie Asseo, Bloomberg News
The U.S. Supreme Court refused to revive an adult-entertainment executive's bid to avoid paying $65 million to the owner of the Sex.com Web site for stealing the Internet address. The justices turned down Stephen Michael Cohen's argument that he should be allowed to appeal the order that he pay Sex.com owner Gary Kremen for acquiring the domain name through fraud. An appeals court dismissed Cohen's appeal in August on grounds that he was a "fugitive from justice."
NEWS
July 26, 2001 | P.J. HUFFSTUTTER
When it comes to kids looking at porn on the Internet, the folks at Sex.com have only one thing to say: Go away. To help ensure youngsters are barred, the adult-entertainment Web site is taking an usually proactive approach and offering to block Internet addresses that are used by schools or other child-oriented centers. "Filters aren't perfect and we all know it," said Daron Babin, president of the management group that runs Sex.com.