In light of what appears to be the imminent sale of Sex.com, the center of his legal hurricane, Gary Kremen has renamed his adult operation and announced plans to move it to Sex.net.
The company formerly known as Sex.com has taken on the name of its parent, Grant Media LLC. The move signals Kremen’s intent to expand his mainstream businesses, among them GalaxySearch.com. Meanwhile, Grant Media will make a heavy push to acquire traffic. Sex.com makes up 20 percent of the company’s business.
“We’re expanding. We’re doing a lot more stuff under the Galaxy Search name and I want to be able to sell the Sex.com name,” Kremen says.
Although there has been no movement, save for a lawsuit filed by a Philadelphia-based company known as Sex.com Inc. against Domain Name Acquisition Group for failure to refund a $500,000 deposit, Kremen fully expects the domain to sell.
Boston-based Domain Name Acquisition Group, an Internet real estate developer and prospector, recently renewed an $11 million option to buy the domain. DNAG, in turn, is actively shopping it. The current option expires in February.
When the sale of Sex.com is complete, the current operation will be moved to Sex.net, and Kremen essentially will end one of the strangest chapters in Internet history.
In 1995, Stephen Michael Cohen stole Sex.com from Kremen by sending a forged transfer letter to Network Solutions. Kremen won back the domain, along with a $65 million judgment, in 2001 after a lengthy court battle. When the judgment was handed down, Cohen fled the country. Four years later, after appealing the judgment all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, Cohen was apprehended in Tijuana while applying for a work permit.
He is currently in a San Jose, Calif., jail awaiting a Nov. 21 hearing.
“I don’t know how I’m going to feel in the future,” Kremen says about the prospect of parting with Sex.com. “Stay tuned.”
