Court to Get Control of Sex.net

Published: 8 February 2001 y., Thursday
But that was just the beginning. Now, Cohen stands to lose income generated from sex.net, kinkymate.com, nastydate.com and a list of more than 80 other predominantly porn-related domains registered under his name. Those are the terms laid out in a Friday ruling from a federal judge in San Jose, California, who authorized a legal advisor to collect income from any of Cohen's Web businesses to raise money for lawsuit damage payments. In his ruling, Judge James Ware said the court would "take custody of any proceeds generated from the operation of any Internet domain name for which Stephen Michael Cohen is listed either as a technical, administrative or billing contact." The money is to be put into a court-supervised account pending final judgment in a lawsuit filed against Cohen by San Francisco entrepreneur Gary Kremen. The ruling marks the latest turn of events in a two-year legal battle over the domain name sex.com, one of the most valuable pieces of real estate on the Internet. Like other recent rulings in the case, it was not a positive development for Cohen. Cohen, who ran the sex.com website from 1995 until 2000, lost a key ruling in November that took the domain out of his hands. At that time, Ware ruled that Cohen had gained control of the coveted Web address illegally, by sending a fraudulent transfer letter to domain name registrar Network Solutions. The judge ordered the site returned to its original owner, Kremen. As part of the November decision, Ware also ruled that Kremen be awarded some damages to make up for the years he lost control of sex.com. The site, a flashy collection of pornographic banner ads, is believed to generate millions each year for its operator. To help figure out how much Kremen is entitled to, the judge ordered Cohen to provide a full accounting of the financial operations of the sex.com site since 1995. Ware also ordered Cohen and the Ocean Fund, a corporate entity he is believed to control, to provide $25 million to be held by the court pending final judgment and assessment of damages.
Šaltinis: wired.com
Copying, publishing, announcing any information from the News.lt portal without written permission of News.lt editorial office is prohibited.

Facebook Comments

New comment


Captcha

Associated articles

New iPhone app from MasterCard for ATM finder gets thumbs up

The iPhone's new “ATM Hunter” is a a free iPhone application built by MasterCard that allows users to quickly find the ATMs that are closest to them. more »

House says Visa, MasterCard are to blame for security hacks, card compromises

In security breach cases last year, such as Hannaford Bros. supermarket and the card processing firm Heartland Payment Systems, cybercriminals gained access to millions of consumers' credit card details. more »

Ingenico warns contactless technology will divide the market

Ingenico, a provider of payment solutions, says contactless technology will split the retail market this year, improving sales figures for early adopters and costing those who shun the additional investment in this burgeoning technology. more »

Patent office validates many claims in widevine

Widevine Technologies today announced that the US Patent and Trademark Office has reconfirmed the validity of many claims of Widevine's U.S. more »

Nokia makes high-dollar investment in mobile payments startup

Nokia Corp., the world's largest maker of cell phones, is making a large investment in California-based Obopay Inc., a startup that's pushing person-to-person mobile-payments technology. more »

Banks invest in more tech to find synergies between anti-fraud, anti-money laundering

The increasing amount of overlap and duplication of data, tasks and processes in their anti-fraud and anti-money laundering divisions is driving banks to seek synergies between compliance, risk management and security, according to a new report from Datamonitor. more »

Global IPTV subs exceed 20mn

The total number of IPTV subscribers worldwide passed the 20mn mark at the end of 2008, according to new figures from Informa Telecoms & Media, taking into account both disclosed and estimated figures. more »

"Television is like the invention of indoor plumbing"

The IPTV World Forum opened its doors this morning on a bright London day, and the mood was equally optimistic indoors, with the conference rooms packed for keynote presentations from Christopher Schläffer of Deutsche Telekom, Christophe Forax from the European Commission and the BBC's Richard Halton, charged with making Project Canvas a reality. more »

Card fraud pushes consumers to non-bank online payments

A new Gartner Inc. report suggests that financial fraud could drive consumers away from banks and into the arms of electronic payment systems, such as PayPal, that they perceive to be more secure. more »

MasterCard: PayPass 50 million issued

In the last year this more than doubles the number of cards and devices in circulation around the world. more »