SEX.COM Up For Sale
Anyone interested?
The rights to one of the most notorious adult sites on the internet are up for sale just four years after they changed hands for a record $14m (£9m), with auctioneers hoping that sex can sell all over again.
Sex.com, the most expensive domain name on the internet and the subject of two books, is set to go under the hammer after its owner Escom was unable to pay its debts. The domain name of the site, which has been described as the “jewel in the internet’s crown”, is to go under the hammer on 18 March.
Details of the process were posted on the website of auctioneer David R Maltz & Co about a week ago, which has since received a slew of enquiries. The event will be held at law firm Windels Marx Lane & Mittendorf in New York. The domain name will not come cheap. Interested parties will have to bring a certified cheque for $1m just to be allowed to participate. However, a source close to the sale said the site was “unlikely to bring in what it did in 2006, although it really depends on how much someone wants it”.
The forced sale came after Escom defaulted on its debts to Dom Partners, according to the notice of foreclosure sale posted by Dom’s lawyers. It marks the latest in a series of twists in the site’s extraordinary 16-year history. The tale spawned Sex.com: One Domain, Two Men, Twelve Years and the Brutal Battle for the Jewel in the Internet’s Crown by journalist Kieren McCarthy in 2007, and The Sex.com Chronicles: A White-Hat Lawyer’s Journey to the Dark Side of the Internet by Charles Carreon the following year.
