Abbywinters.com

Abby Winters

URL	Abbywinters.com
Type of site	Pornographic Paysite
Registration	monthly fee
Owner	Garion Hall
Launched	8 October 2000
Current status	active

Abbywinters.com is a formerly Australia-based pornographic paysite specialising in lesbian and solo sex acts by female models, as well as a range of both scripted and unscripted 'real world'-type situations, such as naked yoga, aerobics, video games, swimming, car washing, and so on. The site claims all-female shooting crews and prides itself on being at the forefront of the "natural", reality-based porn market.

The site is noted among fans for its skilful mix of both its professional-model "core" (of which it only has a few) alongside a massive trove of genuinely amateur models, most of whom had never worked in erotic modelling or video before coming to the company. All material is captured with particularly high-quality camera-work (usually using high-definition video and photography, especially from 2009, together with somewhat atypical "signature" capture angles) and has no models with surgically enhanced breasts; models wear little make-up, and most of them also often have a full patch of pubic hair; in addition the website claims that the photos themselves, once shot, are not retouched in any way.

The site was launched in 2000 and has since been split into three "mini-sites"; 'Solo', 'Girl-Girl', and 'Intimate Moments' (masturbation).

Abbywinters.com is in the top 10,000 visited websites in the world according to Alexa traffic rankings, and in January 2008 had about 30,000 subscribers. It is an Australian site but 65% of subscribers are in the United States. In 2010, amidst a shifting political climate in the Australian government on the question of pornography's acceptability in the country, the company's offices were unilaterally moved to the Netherlands; however, prior to that move, the site's web servers had already been based in the Netherlands and United States for quite some time. As of 2010 the site has moved its operations to the Netherlands.

Description of content

The website features female models typically between the ages 18 to 25. Most models have not appeared in pornography before. In photo-based shoots the women usually begin wearing their own clothes and underwear, which they gradually shed, and are photographed in their own homes and bedrooms and/or in outdoor settings. In videos, there may also be a similar candid-interview type situation, but videos on the site involving groups usually have a theme or (at least implied) back-story to them, such as beginning a yoga class in full yoga clothes and gradually shedding them as the yoga session progresses. As of 2009 there were 1200 models featured on the site, with more than 370,000 images and almost 4000 videos, with new content uploaded twice daily.

Wired writer Regina Lynn claims that the site portrays sex more realistically than most pornography. Customers are able to suggest scenarios on the sites forum which are sometimes filmed. After establishing a rough scenario for each shoot the production team then lets the performers decide how fast the scene progresses, and which sex acts they will perform. All scenes are filmed by women, some of whom have previously modelled for the site. Models are paid approximately $800 for a solo masturbation scene, and $1,400 for a sex scene with another model.

In 2003/04 Abbywinters.com deviated from featuring only girl/girl sex by filming 6 boy/girl scenes. All scenes were portrayed as being real couples as, like all the females, none of the males were professionals. Garion Hall stated on the website's discussion board on 24 November 2010 that Abbywinters.com are planning to add regular boy/girl scenes in the future.^{[citation needed]}

Company Status

Garion Hall is the founder and CEO of Abbywinters.com including related companies such as GMBill, the site's payment service. The abbywinters.com website is owned and operated by Dutch company Abbywinters.com BV. On 1 June 2010, Hall announced that G Media was selling the business to his new Dutch company, and would be moving its operations to Amsterdam, Netherlands because of recent legal issues in Australia. The company was based in the Melbourne suburb of Fitzroy. The company now operates from an office in central Amsterdam.

in late 2007 the company had also briefly opened a second office in Sydney. In late 2007 the site partnered with Wicked Pictures as the exclusive distributor for Abbywinters.com DVDs.

The company claims to have regularly donated $1,000 a week to various organisations including Samba, ASACP, and various other open source projects, as well as health aid organisations. Consequently, Abby Winters is a Sustaining Contributor on the Free Software Foundation's Thank GNUs 2007, and on the OpenBSD's donations list. It also made a A$78,000 donation to the Black Saturday bushfires appeal.

Criticism by former model Liandra Dahl

In 2007 ex-Abby Winters model Liandra Dahl wrote on her blog about privacy problems concerning G-Media sites, which was picked up by the Herald Sun. Dahl was concerned that Abby Winters fails to inform young and inexperienced models that content may be available outside of the confines of the paysite, on file sharing networks, and how their involvement in pornography might revisit them inhibiting their future choices. However, following the raid on G-Media, Liandra reopened her blog to make clear that the Herald sun had "misquoted her" and that she didn't support the new laws against pornography in Australia.

Police raid on G Media

On 16 June 2009, G Media offices in Melbourne were raided by Victoria Police as part of a wider "Operation Refuge". The Herald Sun article gave two grounds for the raid: that G-Media may have filmed an under-age model, and that G-Media's DVD productions may have contravened Victoria's film classification laws. The report states that CEO Garion Hall was arrested but released later the same day, and claims that the raid was made in response to information provided by the paper. G Media later released a statement stating that nothing had been seized in the raid, and that the police were polite and amiable throughout. In December 2009 CEO Garion Hall was charged by Victoria Police with 54 counts of making objectionable films for gain, and possessing a commercial quantity of objectionable films. According to a post by Hall on the site, the charges against him were eventually dropped and two charges were filed against the company itself. A judge then fined the company $6,000 on May 28, 2010. As a result, Hall decided to move the company out of Australia to Amsterdam.

Censorship

Abbywinters.com is included on a list published on Wikileaks, on 19 March 2009, alleged to be the ACMA (Australian Communications and Media Authority) blacklist of websites to be prohibited in Australia under the proposed Australian Firewall.

Awards

Abbywinters.com won the AVN Award in 2008, for Best Amateur Series, with its "Intimate Moments" DVD, and has been selected as "Best Adult Website", in 2006 and 2007, by Australian Adult Industry Awards. It also won the Best amateur series award at the Adult Entertainment Expo. At the 2011 AVN Awards, Abbywinters.com was awarded Best Membership Site, for their second AVN Award.

External links

• Abby Winters website
• Abby Winters press website
• Abby Winters interview with Garion Hall at AdultDVDTalk.com (October 2007)
• Abby Winters interview with Garion Hall by Abby Ehmann (published in ErosZine 12-11-2007)