Business Books:This book is not about sex, but it chronicles the legal war for the coveted domain name, writes Ray Nolan.
First, and with apologies to those who saw me reading this book in the bars of Glandore, Sex.comis not about sex. Second, and, unfortunately for those who, like me, have read most of the books in the genre, it's not really a dotcom book either. Books like DotBomb, DotCon, Boo Hooand the like provide valuable insight into what not to do when building an e-business, in the absence of much reading on what one should do.
Describing the domain name sex.com on the book's cover as "the jewel in the internet's crown" is perhaps a stretch too far, but those who have been trying to make a buck since the evolution of the web must surely acknowledge that, without pornography, its advancement would certainly have been less fervent. Sex sells, and the internet meant that those previously too shy to purchase porn from the top shelf were now in a position to indulge from the relative anonymity of their home PC.
The world's "first business" migrated online with ease and online porn barons were born. Certainly, one of the first commercial uses of HTML must have been for pornographic illustrations.
Domain names, the brand names of the internet, were freely available in the early days of the web and those who registered such names early stood to make a fortune.
The chances in 2007 of coming up with a word, or derivation of a word, that has not been registered already are slim indeed. To own sex.com, particularly in the years preceding widespread search-engine use, was to have the word most likely to be typed into the address bar in web browsers throughout the world.
And so it was that Gary Kremen, an extremely bright computer graduate, came to register the domain name sex.com in 1994, only to have it whipped from under him less than 12 months later by Stephen Cohen, a con man with a history of cheque fraud and other subterfuge.
Ironically, the methods used to steal the domain name involved no high-tech hacking, no cryptography to break passwords, not even a computer in sight. The confidence trickster did what he knew best - faked a fax and make a few phone calls under assumed names. Simple.
The book's author, journalist Kieren McCarthy, has maintained an interest in the case to have the domain name rightfully returned and has written articles about its progress.
He is thus well placed to chronicle the case from its origins in 1996, when Kremen first realised that the domain name had been stolen.
McCarthy tells the story of a drug-using visionary web entrepreneur who stumbles repeatedly through years of litigation against Cohen, the con man who used every trick in the book to stifle his efforts.
Any doubt as to the credibility of Kremen as a web visionary are dispelled when one hears that he founded match.com, perhaps the world's most successful dating website, and invested shrewdly in other online start-ups during his sober moments.
But his adversary had cunning, a smattering of legal experience and was earning a fortune from the sex.com website with which to prop up an increasingly complex web of legal actions.
The result of the case, to the extent that the reader is not aware of how it ends, is revealed on the back cover of the book.
This leaves the author with little by way of plot, except to outline the origins of the domain name system, describe the protagonists, and then spend the majority of the book trawling through the various legal motions, selection of counsel, collection of depositions and so on. This he does well, accurately describing exchanges as though he were present.
In depicting the simplicity with which the con man protracted the case, all the while earning millions that were never recovered, McCarthy certainly illustrates the trepidation with which one should approach litigation in the US.
The lawyers among us may well enjoy such a read, although I suspect they would expect payment to get through the more tedious moments. For me, were it not for my need to complete this assignment, I fear I would have capitulated somewhere around page 50.
A visit to sex.com today, purely by way of research, yields an advertisement engine rather than a heavily branded porn offering. Methinks that, having paid $12 million (€8.96 million) for it recently, its new owners have something bigger altogether in the works.
Three-letter domain names are gold dust and this one is certainly 24 carat. The book of the same name, well written as it is, doesn't quite have the same sparkle.
Ray Nolan is founder of Web Reservations International. He recently acquired boo.com, the online fashion retail domain whose demise came to represent the collapse of the dotcom bubble, which he is relaunching as an online hotel booking site.
Sex.com (One domain, two men, twelve years and the brutal battle for the jewel in the internet's crown) by Kieren McCarthy. Quercus Publishing. £12.99 (€19).
