abbywinters.com (or simply Abby Winters) is a pornographic paysite largely revolving around nude modelling pictorials and lesbian and solo sex acts by female models. It claims all-female shooting crews and is part of the "natural", reality-based porn market. The site was launched in the year 2000

In January 2008, abbywinters.com had about 30,000 subscribers.

In 2010, responding to a changing political climate in the Australian government on the question of pornography's acceptability in the country, the company's offices were moved to the Netherlands. Prior to that relocation, the site's web servers had already been based in the Netherlands and the United States for quite some time. According to Adultreviews.com Review of Abby Winters, as of March 2018 there were 1,485 models featured on the site, with more than 500,000 images and 5,459 videos. New content was uploaded twice daily. Customers are able to suggest scenarios on the site's forum which are sometimes filmed.

The existence of Abby Winters as person

According to Garion Hall, Abby Winters is a woman he met in 1999 who wanted to shoot alternative porn and started a website. Garion was involved in running the commercial side. In 2003, she was no longer interested in the matter and Garion bought her out. The character is considered to be invented and a moniker for Garion Hall.

Company status

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 legal problems in Australia (see below for details). The company had been based in the Melbourne suburb of Fitzroy before their move. It 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 other open source projects, as well as health aid organisations. Abby Winters was 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 Helen Corday (then known with the stage name as 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. Dahl later noted 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". 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 fined the company $6,000 on 28 May 2010. This combination of legal problems, law enforcement encounters, financial penalties, and a less accepting climate for the company's activities, led Hall to move the company out of Australia altogether and relocate it to Amsterdam.

Censorship

thumb|Abby Winters girl plays chess with a fan at AVN 2008

Abbywinters.com was included on a list published on WikiLeaks, on 19 March 2009, which was alleged to be the Australian Communications and Media Authority blacklist of websites which were due to be prohibited in Australia under the proposed Australian Firewall.

Awards

  • 2006 Australian Adult Industry Awards – 'Best Adult Website'
  • 2007 Australian Adult Industry Awards – 'Best Adult Website'
  • 2011 AVN Award – 'Best Membership Site'
  • 2012 XBIZ Award – 'Adult Site of the Year (Solo/All-Girl)'
  • 2013 XBIZ Award – 'All-Girl Release of the Year' for Girls With Girls

References

  • Abby Winters website
  • Abby Winters interview with Garion Hall at AdultDVDTalk.com (October 2007)
  • Abby Winters interview with Garion Hall by Abby Ehmann (published in ErosZine on 12 November 2007)
  • Andrea Castillo Bocanete, 2011, abbywinters.com - female friendly corporate amateur porn? case study (pdf)