Sex.com

Sex.com book bigger and better

May 8, 2006

I have passed the deadline for my book on Sex.com and I estimate I am still three weeks to a month away from finishing.

How? How could I have miscalculated? And why is it taking so long? Well, there are several reasons:

  1. A book contains a hell of a lot of words and it is hard, relentless work getting them written
  2. I underestimated the depth of the story. I am *still* discovering new elements to the story. I suppose when you are talking about two characters like Gary Kremen and Stephen Cohen, it was never going to be simple. And they have been at it for 10 years now. I figure if I am going to write a book on the whole saga I have to do it as comprehensively as possible.
  3. It took me a month to escape from my news editor mentality. You really have to get into a whole different state of mind to write a book
  4. It just takes alot of time to read thousands upon thousands of pages, interview people and pull it all into a coherent mass
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More updates to the Sex.com site

March 23, 2006

Okay, I have completed the first, biggest stage of the Sexdotcom website.

I have grown sick of trying to get a blog fitting within the Latest news section so I have just stuck in some basic HTML covering where the book is up to, and what is going on with the Sex.com case in the real world.

I will add a blog style approach later, and then finally get around to have a blog interface later once I’ve moved onto a new hosting deal with MySQL so that people have leave comments. But, frankly, it was taking up too much time when I need to do more writing.

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Sex.com website updated

March 14, 2006

Christ, it takes ages to build an archive of articles.

Anyway, I have now built the biggest resource for the Sex.com story on my site – which is just as well seeing as I’m writing a whole book about it. And there’s still more to be added. I also plan to add some of my unique resources i.e. transcripts of my interviews, maybe tapes, more obscure news stories, chunks of the book written so far etc etc.

I am also very pleased with both the Timeline, which has helped give a real sense of the progression and the twists and turns in the case, and in particular the Legalese section which effectively explains a whole series of legal lingo and concepts in simple language and ties them into how they appeared in the Sex.com case.

Basically, what I’m saying is: I’ve updated my Sexdotcom.info site and you should have a look because it’s interesting.

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Sex.com book is go! go! go!

February 8, 2006

The best, most exciting, most important story surrounding the formation of the Internet we know today is the incredible tale of Sex.com.

The domain was registered in the very early days of 1994 – when domains were free – by a Chicago geek called Gary Kremen. It was then stolen in 1995 but lifelong con-man Stephen Cohen who used it to build up an enormous multi-million-pound empire.

Sex.com book coverBut Kremen fought and fought and fought, using up his own personal fortune from the sale of dotcom boom shares, and after years of battles – in and out of the courts – finally won the domain back. As a result, he put domain names in their proper place in law for the first time.

But rather than pay the $65 million the judge ordered, Cohen fled across the Mexican border. Kremen has been chasing Cohen around the world, trying to get his money, using the proceeds from Sex.com to fund it. Finally, after years of chasing, Cohen was picked up in Tijuana late last year and transported across the US border.

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