A set of three documents filed in California Bankruptcy Court earlier this week reveal that the world’s most valuable domain name – Sex.com – has been sold for $13m, just one million dollars more than it was sold for back in January 2006.

The tale of Sex.com is a fascinating and complex one (I wrote a book about it), and never short of twists and turns. The most recent twist came earlier this year when the company that bought Sex.com from Gary Kremen in 2006 (for $12m plus $2m in stock and other options), Escom LLC, declared bankruptcy. Escom has been unable to make Sex.com sufficiently profitable and was overdue on interest and debt repayments.

This announcement was quickly followed by the news that Sex.com would be put up for public auction – the time, date and location and the need to be holding a cheque for $1 million to even be allowed in the room, were published. But then, one of the owners of Escom, Michael Mann, broke cover (Escom has always been purposefully cloaked in corporate law cloth) in order to prevent the auction going ahead.

After some more fighting, it was agreed in July that the Sex.com would be sold in a closed auction run by domain brokers Sedo.

That auction ended at the end of September but no news emerged, although Sedo did tell me that something had been agreed but they weren’t in a position to discuss it. Finally, a set of three documents provided to the Central District Court of California on Monday, put into the record on Tuesday and first noticed by Kevin Murphy/DomainIncite today outlined the sale of Sex.com by Escom to another strange corporation, Clover Holdings Ltd, based in Caribbean offshore tax haven St Vincent and Grenadines.

You can view all three documents here: 115 (details of the sale); 116 (legal request to speed up sale); and 117 (setting the date for a hearing on 27 October). I think I’ll attend the hearing.

Anyway, possibly the most interesting thing, apart from the peculiar behaviour of all parties yet again, is that the domain has gone up in price by only $1m in nearly five years.

• Does this mean that Gary Kremen got a great price back in 2006?
• Does it mean that the value of dot-coms, even Sex.com, is stabilising?
• Or does it mean that the buyers kept Escom down to the original price because they knew Escom had no real choice?

I’m not sure. I’ll give it some thought. My feeling is a bit of all of them, but mainly the last one.

The auction for Sex.com was due to be held in New York a few hours ago but, as became clear last night, creditors of the current owner, Escom, forced through an involuntary bankruptcy which has caused the auction to be “postponed”.

Thanks to the court document [pdf] filed here in Los Angeles, we now have a little bit more information about who the creditors are and what they are owed. Washington Technology Associates is owed $6.6 million; iEntertainment, $3.5 million; and AccountingMatters.com a tiny $7,800. All three companies list the same address in Maryland.

No one is talking at the moment so Escom remains somewhat of a mystery, as it has been since it first bought Sex.com off Gary Kremen in 2004 for $12 million. But with all the media attention on an auction [pdf] that was pulled at the last minute, you have to admit that the world surrounding Sex.com is never dull.

So I’m hearing at a very late time that the much-vaulted auction of Sex.com is off following a Chapter 11 bankruptcy. (Chapter 11 meaning that the company is folded but that its assets are still available for sale etc.)

The auction was due to happen tomorrow afternoon, New York-time. As I write this it is late LA-time. Now, I’m not up-to-speed on the recent changes in US bankruptcy law, nor on what has happened precisely with Escom. So I’m not sure that the Chapter 11 bankruptcy has sufficient impact to prevent the auction but my gut feeling is that it does. Unfortunately everyone is asleep in New York and Los Angeles at the moment, so we’ll just have to see what happens.

It won’t be the first or last time that sex.com has seen last-minute turnarounds.

Update: Yes it is “postponed”. Interesting to see what happens after this.

I recorded a show for National Public Radio’s (NPR) On the Media show earlier this week talking about Sex.com, my book about it and the domain’s upcoming auction next month.

The show played this morning. You can see the NPR page (with transcript) at http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2010/02/26/06. And listen to the show below:

Here’s what NPR has to say of the show:

Sex.com

On March 18th, a public auction will be held in Midtown Manhattan. On the block? Sex.com, one of the most coveted pieces of internet real estate, ever. But be warned. Sex dot com comes with a long and troubled past. It’s all chronicled by Kieren McCarthy in SEX.COM: One Domain, Two Men, Twelve Years and the Brutal Battle for the Jewel in the Internet’s Crown.

I am leaving my job as general manager of public participation for ICANN on 25 November.

Yesterday, the COO sent round a note to staff; this morning I find myself elevated to the point of wanting to dance. Whenever I leave a job, I get the feeling of a weight being lifted off my shoulders and, shortly after, feel the excitement of future possibilities. This time, it is particularly strong.

I still have a busy meeting in Seoul in just over a week to deal with, and then more work for the Internet Governance Forum in Egypt two weeks after that. But from December I will be free to apply my energies wherever I wish and man does it feels good.

I’ve learnt a hell of a lot over the past two-and-a-half years but with the ending of a big agreement between the organization and the US government (and they said it couldn’t be done), with my boss heading back to Australia, and with a feeling that my ability to effect changes has passed its peak, it is definitely time to move on.

Update: I just found my original post on taking the job. Pleased to see I have managed to stay true to myself, although I may have to evaluate performance against my own goals in December.

What will I be doing?

I have a long list of things that has been building up for a while. My Sex.com book and its film rights, a book on the domain name industry, a book on the cutting edge and revolutionary uses of the Internet. I may write my Great Drunks book. I may write my Rockall disaster book.

I have two business plans. And I have my beloved journalism: the new Internet extensions will be fascinating; I am absolutely itching to get stuck into electric car technology. Two people have been asking me to build their websites for a while. I definitely want to do some consulting on participation and the Internet to save people huge amounts of time and trouble figuring it out for themselves. And I have an overriding desire to do some real good in a broader sense – maybe get into some of the gov2.0 stuff going on.

My head is buzzing with plans; just need to take a week off surfing and fixing up my van and it will all come clear. I’m also getting married to Sapna in April in San Francisco and we will probably move up there in the new year, which I’m also excited about.

So great opportunities lie ahead. In the meantime I need to stop writing this post and get back to the unbelievable list of things to do for the ICANN Seoul meeting.

Below is the note that the COO generously sent to staff yesterday re: my heading off.

Hello all,

Kieren McCarthy has decided to leave his role as general manager of public participation at ICANN.

Kieren has been with ICANN since February 2007, initially working from the UK and then moving to Los Angeles. In that time he has worked tirelessly and won frequent plaudits from the community and Board for improving ICANN’s interactions with its community and lowering the barriers to participation in the organization. He will be leaving at the end of November, following the ICANN Seoul meeting and Internet Governance Forum in Egypt.

Some of Kieren’s achievements have been to revamp the ICANN website, restructure the public comment process, greatly expand and improve remote participation at meetings, produce monthly magazines, encourage and assist the production of a range of other newsletters and updates to the community, introduce professional photography and video, create a meeting question box, and oversee many of ICANN’s web presences including the blog, public participation site, meeting sites, mobile site, and the front page of the main ICANN site.

Kieren has been pivotal in the introduction of ICANN’s translation and interpretation programs, its consultation principles, and its document deadline policy. He has also introduced ICANN to a range of social networking tools, used to improve interaction and communication with the community, as well as a number of innovative sessions at international public meetings, including a joint meeting of representatives of all ICANN’s arms.

Kieren is leaving to work on a range of projects. He will be partly returning to journalism and will continue to cover Internet and green technology issues within California for the foreseeable future.

I’m sure you all join me in wishing Kieren great success in these next projects.

Thanks!

Doug

I think Amazon is fantastic. It is on the cutting edge of Internet commerce and it constantly pushes at the barriers… I’m a big fan of the Kindle – the first proper e-book; I admire Amazon’s affiliate program which is inventive and generous; but most of all, I love the way it has allowed booksellers across the world to tap into its enormous online presence, enabling independents to name their price and make books easily available that previously would have required a visit to the world’s main book repositories (in the UK that’s the Bodleian Library and the British Library at Paddington).

But I have to say I am foxed when it comes to what Amazon has to say with respect to my own book – Sex.com. While pondering getting a US publishing deal today, I had a look at Amazon.co.uk to see how my book was doing, whether it had any good reviews and so on.

Sex.com is out of print at the moment. So I was pleased to see it has been picked up by second-hand booksellers. The price wasn’t very encouraging though. No author likes to see their book offered for less than the paper it costs to print it on, so seeing Sex.com offered for £0.08 – or 8p – was not exactly exhilarating. But then what’s this – it is also on sale for £71.76. £71.76? What’s going on?

Yes, apparently someone thinks my book is worth £71.76. In fact several people. I can only assume this is one of the books I have signed. So does that mean my signature is worth £71.68? I’d love to think so. But I suspect not.

Amazon is offering the cheapest “new” versions of my book for £9.99. Then there’s a new one for £10.99 and from there the price leaps to £29.99. Well I have 10 copies in my flat that I would happily sell for $40 to anyone that asks. But then on the flipside, there a range of eight sellers ready to put my book in your hands for under £1.00.

Clearly some very strange economics going on. I’d love to find to a way of deluding myself into believing that this is a clear sign of restricted supply to growing demand for a work of brilliance causing price fluctuations but I suspect it’s just the Internet being funny again.

So get your copy now in case it becomes so expensive you can’t afford it, or so cheap you don’t want it. One of the two.

I am going to have to make a determined effort to update this blog more often. I always feel better when I am writing. Anyway, just as an update: I am currently in New Delhi in the Maurya Hotel following a busy conference week. I’ll be heading to the airport soon to go to Paris, where I hope to meet up with various folk that are integral to the next two conferences coming up both in June: the OECD ministerial in Seoul, followed immediately afterwards by the next ICANN meeting in Paris.

But in between, and for Thursday and Friday this week, I will be at Domainpulse in Vienna giving a talk partly about my book, Sex.com, and partly about the history of making money from domain names. You can see the full programme here. It should be interesting: Wolfgang Kleinwachter, Peter van Roste, Sabine Dolderer, Patrik Faltström, Daniel Karrenberg plus a number of people I have yet to meet and look forward to doing so. If you’re going, see you there.

Kevin Murphy, a British IT journo based in the US, has done a review of my Sex.com book on his blog.

He likes it. Which is nice since he is one of roughly three journalists in the world who understand the domain name system and its history. You can read it all here.

I like the opening line: “This is easily the funnest tech industry book I’ve read in a long time.”

I’m still don’t know where things are at with the US publisher, or this bloke in New York was interested in making a screenplay out of the book, or if I’m ever going to make any money from the book. Still, what does it matter in the wider scheme of things? I managed to write a book and people seem to enjoy it.

This has to be good – I note that Amazon.com is now selling my book – Sex.com.

Unfortunately there is still a four to six-week delivery date on it, which leads me to conclude that my publishers have yet to strike a deal with a US publisher. I also note on a quick perusal of the Net that the Sydney Morning Herald and ran a whole extract in its edition today – Chapter 3, I believe. And I’m pleased to see that Techworld – where I was news ed – ran an extract last week. Alot has happened since I’ve been away.

I’ve also got a lovely review on Amazon.com. Although this doesn’t appeared to have helped my ranking much – it’s still way down at book no 186,461. Anyway, the review:

Review

Don’t enter the world of Intellectual Property without this book, June 6, 2007

By Jonglier

Forget the lubricious or lascivious, there’s little if any of that in Kieren McCarthy’s business-thriller/page-turner. Its essential subject matter is on the face of it dry as a bone: trademarks, internet domain names or URLs, intellectual property rights, and the civil legal system that arbitrates on all of the above.

Yet McCarthy makes the topic alive, fraught, fascinating and above all important: to you and me as media users, to would-bet net entrepreneurs, to anyone to whom ideas – and their protection and promotion – is important… But oh how close, in the dying days of the saga, victory looked like turning to the sourest possible defeat!

Rush to your credit card wallet and buy this book now. Buy two: you’re sure to know a net fiend who’ll find it instructive and enthralling.”

Now ain’t that nice. I wonder if I’ll get any money for all this.

There was a review in the Sunday Telegraph at the weekend, so I did something I’ve only done once before in my life and bought it.

I knew it didn’t bode well when they managed to misspell my name not once but twice in the piece (in fact it’s not spelt right anywhere). Once of the first rules of journalism is to make absolutely sure you get the correct spelling of someone’s name, because it’s the one thing that most irritates people – that and their age being wrong. So despite the book having “Kieren McCarthy” in bold letters on the front of the book, it turns out that the Sunday Telegraph believes one “Kieran McCarthy” wrote it, while the reviewer is convinced someone called “Keiren McCarthy” was behind it.

What’s more, the Telegraph website is down at the moment so I can’t link to the review. Perhaps divine justice.

Issues

Interestingly, the review does something that I have noticed with all the other reviews – it covers only one facet of the entire battle. In this case, the online porn angle. Perhaps this is the price for having called the book simply “Sex.com”. People open it expecting it be a sordid tale about sex and the Internet. My original title was “The Brutal Battle for Sex.com” – this may have given a better balance. Anyway, if you do read the book expecting online sex stories, you are going to be disappointed. And I suspect this is what the reviewer was.

Something else that has crossed my mind while in the course of promoting the book for the past week – how many people have actually read the book? And how thoroughly have they read it? The radio shows appear to fall clearly into two categories: those that haven’t read a word, and those that have read it all the way through. I’m not sure Anita Anand on Radio Five Live hadn’t even seen a copy of the book lying about, let alone read it. With her show featuring 10 people a night, you can hardly blame her, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the interview was the most scrappy and unfocussed of those I’ve done. James O’Brien on LBC on Saturday morning was a nice bloke and he admitted to me quite openly he hadn’t read it but then he did a good job of asking questions and following up the answers.

What was interesting was an interview I did with New Zealand radio which surprised me in that it was about domain names – and in some depth. It would appear I’m not the only freak to find these things interesting. And then the BBC Radio Wales guy was really into it and that was a pleasure to be a part of.

Newspapers

So that’s radio – as for newsprint. Well, I’m pretty certain that all the reviewers merely skim the book. I suppose this is inevitable if you have to review x number of books every week, especially if the review is going to be the smallest of the ones you’re writing that week. But even so, it feels like a bit of a cheat to me. The reviews – even the ones that have been complimentary – strike me as very one-dimensional. And often following the same formula: start with one precise point; cover the overall story; pull in one or two quotes from the book; add the most interesting fact you happen to come across; and then in the last paragraph cover whether the author did a good job.

It makes for quite dull reading (I’ve read a number of the other book reviews each time) and this is highlighted by the fact that you can really tell when a book reviewer has gone to the trouble of reading the whole book and then reflected on it. The quality reviews stand out a mile. Anyway, my reason for believing the mechanics of book reviewer for newspapers is to skim the book, dip in and out, maybe keep reading if your attention is grabbed is because each review has gone down a single thread and largely ignored the other parts of the book.

So it’s either the porn angle, or the con-man angle, or the domain name angle, or the legal battle angle. I wonder how people decide on the angle. I suspect it is a combination of the title, a read of the press release, then either the preface or the opening chapter, following by opening the book at various random spots and reading a few pages. I don’t know though, maybe I’m wrong.

Online

The best reviews to my mind have been those online. People have read the book, reflected on it and written a review. Mind you, most of the reviews online have been by tech sites and the book is about the Net, so I’m not sure it’s the best control sample. Still, the criticism in these cases has made far more sense to me – I can see where they’re coming from. And I like that. I don’t quite understand why people said they don’t read their reviews – why on earth not? Maybe people are so thin-skinned they can’t handle a critical review, or maybe – and this seems much more plausible to me than it did a week ago – they get irritated and disappointed in equal measure that someone hasn’t actually read the book but feels comfortable enough to review it with assumed authority.

Anyway, back to the Telegraph review – it followed the same formula and the actual review was in the last para. “It’s an interesting story which includes almost every kind of dirty-dealing you could want – apart from sex, oddly enough. But McCarthy has made awfully heavy weather of his exposition. He’s dauntingly solid on the facts, but less good at marshalling them into comprehensible order, or animating his two main characters. The result is like a prolonged battle of the ciphers that eventually left this reader itching to boot them both into cyberspace.”

Hidden meaning

This is what I see in that. “Heavy weather” – reviewer not wanting or expecting details of the legal battle; “dauntingly solid on the facts” – reviewer doesn’t know or care about the Internet’s domain name system or the politics behind it; “animating his two main characters” – reviewer has skimmed the book; “prolonged battle of ciphers” – I have no idea what this means. But the most interesting part was “less good at marshalling them into comprehensible order” – I can’t decide whether this is again an example of the reviewer skimming the book and being surprised and confused by the fact that different topics keep jumping into the story; or whether he has a point and I have crammed too much in too small a space and so it feels a bit too much.

Whenever I have time I will re-read the book and see if it possesses a coherent thread through it. I was pretty sure it did, but it might be worth a second look. I hope to learn some lessons about books so the next one I write is better.

Apparently I got a good review in Zoo. Now I’ve bought the Sunday Telegraph, I suppose there’s no shame in my buying the weekly tits-and-footy title. I am worried that the Daily Mail may review Sex.com though. I may have to send someone else out to buy that one.