The Real Price of Sex.com

Porn and the Internet were made for each other. In exchange for some much-desired privacy, users are willing to deal with fly-by-night companies and even give their credit card data to questionable vendors. The news reports say that Sex, the domain name, is worth at least US$65 million. That's how much a federal judge awarded the rightful owner from the pockets of a cybersquatter who made an estimated $40 million in profit over a five-year stretch. The value set raised a lot of eyebrows. After all, conventional wisdom held that the most expensive domain to date was Business.com, which sold for $7.5 million back in 1999. Naturally, sex trumps business. But this verdict should be viewed as undeniable proof that sex on the Internet is business. Huge business. The battle over Sex.com is a rare glimpse into just how much money is changing hands in the underground Web economy. It is confirmation that pornography is the dominant force on the Web, even after a good five years of legitimate e-commerce growth. Very few people were shocked to learn that federal investigators were charging some New York-based Web pornographers with illegally billing customers millions of dollars. One official admitted that thousands of such cases probably go unreported because of the nature of the complaints.