Abbywinters.com

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Abby Winters
File:Abbywinters logo.jpg
URL abbywinters.com
Type of site pornsite
Registration monthly fee
Owner Garion Hall
Launched 8 October 2000
Current status active

Abbywinters.com is an Australian-based pornographic or erotic paysite and movie studio, which specialises in lesbian and solo erotica of amateur female nude models. The site claims all female shooting crews.[1][2] Abbywinters.com is in the top 10,000 visited websites in the world according to Alexa traffic rankings, and as of January 2008 has about 30,000 subscribers.[3] The site has won several awards for online adult content. The site was launched in 2000.[4]

Contents

[edit] Description of content

The website features female models from ages 18 to 25.[5] Most models have not appeared in pornography before.[4][5] The site does not feature models with surgically enhanced breasts,[5] models wear little makeup,[4] and often have a full patch of pubic hair.[5] The women begin the shoots wearing their own clothes and underwear, which they gradually shed, and are photographed in their own homes and bedrooms and/or in outdoor settings. Most appear in both still photos and videos. As of 2009 there were 1200 models featured on the site, with more than 370,000 images and almost 4000 videos.[6] It has been praised for portraying a more realistic depiction of sex than most pornography.[4] Customers are able to suggest scenarios on the sites forum which are sometimes filmed.[4] 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.[4][5] All scenes are filmed by women, some of whom have previously modeled for the site.[5] Girls are paid approximately $800 for a solo masturbation scene, and $1,400 for a sex scene with another girl.[5]

[edit] Company

Abbywinters.com is owned and operated by G Media, which also operates GMBill, its payment service. Garion Hall is the CEO of all three companies. GMBill also provides payment services to Australia-based site GirlsOutWest.com. Prior to 2008, GMBill also provided payment services to the BeautifulAgony.com, IShotMyself.com, and IFeelmyself.com.

Abbywinters.com is based in the Melbourne suburb of Fitzroy;[7] in late 2007 the company also briefly opened a second office in Sydney.[8] The site's webservers are based in the Netherlands and United States.[9]

From September, 2006 until November, 2007, Abbywinters.com regularly donated money to various organisations, including Samba, ASACP and various other open source projects, as well as health aid organisations.[10] Consequently, Abby Winters is on the Free Software Foundation's Thank GNUs 2007 list as sustaining contributors and on the OpenBSD's donations list also.[11][12]

In late 2007, AbbyWinters.com partnered with Wicked Pictures as the exclusive distributor for AbbyWinters.com DVDs.[13] Although it is an Australian site, 65% of subscribers are in the United States.[5]

[edit] Controversy over the identity of Abby Winters

Abby Winters is an Internet persona. 'Her' first writings to usenet are from 1996.[14] Abby insists in print interviews that she is a real person, but is now removed from the day-to-day operations of the business.[15]

The site's official folklore says that it was founded for fun, launched October 14, 2000, by a photographer, Abby Winters (born December 13, 1974), and her web-designer friend, who observed how poor existing sites were and thought that she could do better.[16] Around May 2002 Abby left to "pursue other interests" and Garion Hall became owner and operator of the website. Abby Winters does regular interviews and writings, but only does them in print,[17] and there is no record of her appearing at any trade shows or events.

In the early years of the site, Abby was credited as the main photographer; as of November 2006, she was using a Canon EOS-1D Mark IIN digital camera.[16]

The suggestion that Abby Winters is a woman has been disputed, with some suggesting that the name is in fact a pseudonym of (male) CEO Garion Hall.[18][19][20][21][22]

Abby's identity has been a frequent and contentious topic of discussion on abbywinters.com's own discussion board.[18] Since abbywinters.com's appearance at the 2008 AVN Adult Entertainment Expo,[23] journalists covering the adult industry have published articles which express scepticism about Abby's identity (often coupled with praise for the site's content);[19][20] these have culminated in the adult news site Fleshbot publishing a photograph of Mr Hall wearing an "Abby" nametag and taking photographs at a 2007 shoot at which "Abby Winters" was the credited photographer.[21][24] In addition, a model who participated in the photoshoot mentioned Hall by name as the photographer in a post on the website's forum, although this reference was later removed.[20]

[edit] Criticism by 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.[25][26] Dahl is concerned that Abby Winters fails to inform young and inexperienced models on how their involvement in pornography might revisit them and inhibit their future choices, in the sense that content may be available outside of the confines of the paysite and be available in file sharing networks. As of May 2008, it remains extremely easy to obtain images and videos of virtually all featured models, including from the, "Members-Only-shoots," through a range of free sources.[22]

[edit] Police Raid on G Media

According to the Herald Sun newspaper, 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 gives 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.[6] 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.[27][28].

[edit] Censorship

Abbywinters.com is included on a list published on Wikileaks, on 19 March, 2009, alleged to be the ACMA blacklist of websites to be prohibited in Australia under the proposed Australian Firewall.[29]

[edit] Awards

Abby Winters has won the AVN Award in 2008, for Best Amateur Series,[30] with its "Intimate Moments" DVD and has been selected as, "Best Adult Website", in 2006 and 2007, by Australian Adult Industry Awards.[31]

[edit] References

  1. ^ http://www.abbywinters.com/main.php?page=AboutAbby
  2. ^ "abbywinters.com Upgrades to Become ASACPs Newest Title Sponsor". ASACP. http://www.asacp.org/page.php?content=news&item=479. Retrieved on 2007-08-28. 
  3. ^ "It’s porn, it’s business, it’s legit". Las Vegas Sun. 2008-01-11. http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2008/jan/11/its-porn-its-business-its-legit/. 
  4. ^ a b c d e f Wired, 2.1.2008, Real Sex Tantalizes as Processed Porn Gets Boring
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h The Village Voice, Australian Girls with Pubic Hair Reclaim Amateur Porn
  6. ^ a b Keith Moor (June 16, 2009). "Director quizzed over production of graphic movies". Herald Sun. www.news.com.au. http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,27574,25641940-2862,00.html. Retrieved on 2009-06-16. 
  7. ^ Abby Winters Contact Information
  8. ^ AVN,7-13-2007 ,Abbywinters.com Opens 2nd Office, Doubles Production
  9. ^ Abby Winters - About the site
  10. ^ Abby Winters Donation FAQ
  11. ^ FSF's list of Thank GNUs 2007
  12. ^ OpenBSD, donations
  13. ^ abbywinters.com and Wicked Pictures establish exclusive distribution deal
  14. ^ usenet profile: See details in articles talkpage
  15. ^ Adult DVD Talk, October 2007, Abby Winters interview
  16. ^ a b Abby Winters, About Abby, her ideas, and her gear
  17. ^ Abby Winters interview
  18. ^ a b Abby Winters bulletin board retrieved 27 December, 2008
  19. ^ a b Cultural Learnings of Abby Winters retrieved 27 December, 2008
  20. ^ a b c Who is Abby Winters? retrieved 27th December, 2008
  21. ^ a b Abby Winters Scandalwatch: The Plot Thickens! retrieved 27 December, 2008
  22. ^ a b Liandra Dahl, [1]2009/{{{url}}} Archive copy at the Internet Archive
  23. ^ ABC News: Porn Stars Shine in Sin City retrieved 29 December, 2008
  24. ^ Abby Winters - Yoga Shoot retrieved 27 December, 2008
  25. ^ Keith Moor (December 03, 2007). "Merchants of Porn". Herald Sun. www.news.com.au. http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,22857379-2862,00.html. Retrieved on 2009-06-16. 
  26. ^ Keith Moor (December 03, 2007). "Porn exploiters attacked". Herald Sun. www.news.com.au. http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,22858702-662,00.html. Retrieved on 2009-06-16. 
  27. ^ "Abby Winters owner Garion Hall issues statement". http://www.somebodythinkofthechildren.com. June 16, 2009. http://www.somebodythinkofthechildren.com/abby-winters-garion-hall-issues-statement/. Retrieved on 2009-06-21. 
  28. ^ Duncan, Edward. "Abby Winters' Hall Issues Statement on Police Raid". AVN. http://business.avn.com/articles/35608.html. Retrieved on 2009-06-23. 
  29. ^ "Legal adult websites blacklisted: AbbyWinters and The Hun banned - Somebody Think Of The Children". www.somebodythinkofthechildren.com. http://www.somebodythinkofthechildren.com/legal-adult-websites-blacklisted-abbywinters-and-the-hun-banned/. Retrieved on 2009-06-16. 
  30. ^ Abby Winters won AVN Award 2008
  31. ^ "Abby Winters press information". Abbywinters.com. http://press.abbywinters.com/aee/. Retrieved on 2008-01-15. 

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbywinters.com"
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