Sex.com is Going Down 124
nathanielinbrazil writes "A motion to dismiss the involuntary bankruptcy of Sex.com has been filed in a California court. Operational turmoil has put its owner in the doghouse with its creditors, who want to take over. 'It's the best domain in the world by far,' said Mike Mann, who has tried to keep the creditors at bay. Sex.com is estimated to be worth $100m. Let the games begin!"
the best domain in the world? (Score:5, Interesting)
What about google.com? microsoft.com?
I'd point out that those sites have made substantially more money for their owners than sex.com. Just reading the stories about this domain, the theft, the international intrigue it makes me think it's the most nefarious domain on the network, but hardly the best one. It reminds me of the story of "the monkey's paw" and unfortunately that was fiction, this is reality.
It might have been valuable back in 1998 or so (Score:5, Interesting)
But aren't domain names pretty irrelevant now in the Brave Google World?
The subset of people naive, dumb or drunk enough to just type "sex" in the url bar probably doesn't intersect in any meaningful way with people who own a credit card and are capable of typing in the number.
Re:Not worth that much i guess (Score:2, Interesting)
I'd think you could make very good money by just selling advertising space on sex.com. Or running just about any kind of business whose target market has a smutty sense of humor. For example, start selling discounted college textbooks from a site called sex.com, throw in some gender-selectable eye candy, and students across North America will beat (off) a path to your door.
Best domain how? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Um (Score:1, Interesting)
With the rise of Youtube-style content theft sites, the general inadequacy of the DMCA for small to medium business in the face of the volume of stolen content, and the global economic downturn showing us that Adult was not recession proof as was always assumed, the number of people paying has plummeted.
3 years ago it was a multibillion $$ industry. These days there are 4 or 5 major players actually selling content on credit-card members only sites, and all the 'free porn' sites [pornhub, redtube, tube8 etc] just sell 'Adult Dating' scams infested with Nigerian Princesses and worse.
This has already, interestingly enough, led to the total demise of fresh content production, and with no foreseeable change in the status quo the actual volume of porn produced will trickle to a near standstill. This is the argument Hollywood uses for their anti-piracy initiatives, but for them it's FUD as they have the forces of the FBI etc. behind them. For us it's reality, as no lawmaker is going to hang his political hat on the career suicide notion of supporting the US porn industry.
Source: I have worked for many years in the online Adult industry