60,000 Koreans clamour for sex

NEWS Almost 60,000 Korean web users are bidding to take ownership of the country's new www.sex.co.kr domain name. A random lottery will pick the eventual winner after administrators became overwhelmed by the interest for the domain after a ban on its use was lifted. In total, 8,000 new domains have been made available by the lifting of a ban on URLs deemed inappropriate by the South Korean government, but as is often the case with the internet it is 'sex' which is proving most popular. Of the 193,000 applications received in total for the domains, almost 60,000 are bidding to buy the www.sexco.kr address. The eventual owner of the address stands to make a fortune from the site. When the owner of Sex.com registered that particular URL it was the internet equivalent of buying a licence to print money. The US company which owns it earns a reported £10m per year just from advertising on the site. Last year Sex.com became the subject of a $65m ownership dispute (see http://www.silicon.com/a43680 for more).