Shows what I know...
The rumor that sex.com was recently sold for $14 million reminded me of the time when my friend Gary Kremen asked me for some help registering some domain names.
At the time (~1993/4) there were no domain registration fees but you were limited to registering only about 25 domains (might have been ~75, can't remember exactly). Gary had a list of several hundred domain names he wanted to register and asked his friends to register them for him. On the list were things like autos.com carloan.com, mortgage.com and the now famous sex.com.
When I asked him why he wanted to do this he said matter of factly: They're going to valuable.
I told him he was crazy.
Don't know how many he actually registered, or what happened to most of them, but the sex.com saga will forever be part of Internet history. Gary's fight to get it back established a far reaching precedent for internet-related intangible property rights.
Gary's always been a man ahead of his time. Registering sex.com for free is proof positive. But if you need more evidence, the company he was running at the time was 'Full Source Software', perhaps the industries first open source software company. When he was just getting this started he told me he was going to collect a bunch of useful software off the net, compile it, organize it with documentation, write it to tape and sell them.
I told him he was crazy.
Once he sold Full Source Software, he went on to start match.com the first on-line dating site.
This time, I didn't tell him he was crazy.
Congrats Gary.
At the time (~1993/4) there were no domain registration fees but you were limited to registering only about 25 domains (might have been ~75, can't remember exactly). Gary had a list of several hundred domain names he wanted to register and asked his friends to register them for him. On the list were things like autos.com carloan.com, mortgage.com and the now famous sex.com.
When I asked him why he wanted to do this he said matter of factly: They're going to valuable.
I told him he was crazy.
Don't know how many he actually registered, or what happened to most of them, but the sex.com saga will forever be part of Internet history. Gary's fight to get it back established a far reaching precedent for internet-related intangible property rights.
Gary's always been a man ahead of his time. Registering sex.com for free is proof positive. But if you need more evidence, the company he was running at the time was 'Full Source Software', perhaps the industries first open source software company. When he was just getting this started he told me he was going to collect a bunch of useful software off the net, compile it, organize it with documentation, write it to tape and sell them.
I told him he was crazy.
Once he sold Full Source Software, he went on to start match.com the first on-line dating site.
This time, I didn't tell him he was crazy.
Congrats Gary.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home