11Points has an excellent list of Internet firsts. Here's my favorite story:
it's believed that the first porn site was sex.com. It was registered in 1994 by a guy named Gary Kremen.So he got paid three times, it sounds like. Posted by Stephen Silver at August 25, 2009 12:38 AMYes, that rhymes with semen. However... Gary did not have pornographic intentions with sex.com. At least that's what he says today.
A guy named Stephen M. Cohen, which rhymes with bone (and "moan"... and "sex, phone" and "she moves her body like a cyclone"), DID see the pornographic potential of the domain. So he contacted Network Solutions, which administrated all domain names back then, and fraudulently had the ownership of sex.com transferred to his name using a series of fake faxes and forged documents.
He quickly turned it into a thriving, profitable and dirty porn site.
Kremen was furious, and sued Cohen. After a long court battle, Kremen won a $65 million judgment and got the rights to sex.com back. Before he could get the money, though, Cohen fled to Mexico and moved his money to an offshore account. He was tracked down in 2005 and turned over to U.S. authorities.
Kremen sold sex.com for $12 million. In between fighting for sex.com, he had the time to found match.com. Which, I'd guess, has led to exponentially more actual sex than sex.com
First!
Posted by: LilB at August 25, 2009 01:21 PM