The Players Ball

November 15, 2018

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 15, 2019
An engrossing microcosm of the internet's Wild West years, based on an ugly conflict between two eccentric innovators of online dating and pornography.Rolling Stone contributing editor Kushner (Rise of the Dungeon Master: Gary Gygax and the Creation of D&D, 2017, etc.) delivers another digestible look at transformations spurred by unpredictable technologies, turning the dry topic of domain-name battles into a lively representation of the era's hype, confusion, and outsized personalities. He writes about "an epic rivalry that established many of the rules that enable electronic commerce today....The war for Sex.com represents an essential, but overlooked, chapter behind one of the greatest inventions of our time: the internet." The story revolves around two oppositional yet strangely similar figures: Gary Kremen, an unkempt computer innovator whose keen sense of what was next was embodied by his founding of the dating site Match.com, and Stephen Michael Cohen, a con artist, libertine, and tech enthusiast who developed the first sex-oriented bulletin board system in the early 1980s. Cohen was in prison in 1994, as Kremen was developing Match.com and, presciently, registering domain names based on perceiving their future profitability: "His plan was simple, to register each and every category of classified ads online." Later, Cohen also took the Sex.com address, via forged paperwork, seeing its lucrative potential. The mercurial Kremen was astonished to discover the theft in the wake of his emotionally devastating ouster by the Match.com board. "Kremen didn't know why or how Cohen had obtained what was rightfully his," writes the author. This led to a complex, increasingly bitter legal battle. Kushner constructs this labyrinthine tale clearly, focusing on the experiences and outlooks of both Kremen and Cohen and chronicling his discussions with associates and early industry observers. He keeps it compelling by emphasizing the high stakes of their struggle for what the internet has since become, though the narrative sometimes meanders and finally seems anticlimactic.An easily consumed, worthwhile addition to the literature reconstructing how the online world has become both profitable and pervasive.

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March 1, 2019

In 1994, entrepreneur Gary Kremen used a $2,500 loan to create the first online dating service, Match.com, then, intuiting correctly that key domain names would have great value in the future, he bought dozens, including Sex.com. But in 1995, as he prepared to launch his new Sex site, he found that someone had stolen the rights to the name. A portrait of cyber fisticuffs and the Internet's wild early years from acclaimed journalist/author Kushner (Alligator Candy); with a 60,000-copy first printing.

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2019
The internet's early days are often compared to the Wild West, with websites popping up like homesteading claims almost daily wherever new businesses marked their property lines with dot-com domain names. Award-winning journalist Kushner (Alligator Candy, 2016) revisits this tumultuous period by recounting a quirky episode of website tug-of-war between two of the digital world's most colorful pioneers. The stars here are match.com founder Gary Kremen, one of the first Silicon Valley entrepreneurs to foresee the money-making potential of online dating, and Stephen Michael Cohen, a veteran con artist who stole the rights to sex.com from Kremen, making millions in the process. Kremen's media-titillating lawsuit against Cohen began in 1994 and, through many absurd twists and turns, didn't end until 2005 when Kremen won a $65 million judgment and moved into Cohen's Santa Fe mansion. Interspersed between the legal battle's more salacious episodes, Kushner provides some informative background about fledgling online companies like Mosaic and Napster and gives his readers a greater appreciation for the relative dependability and steadiness of today's internet.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)