VICTORIA, Australia—abbywinters.com is closing up shop in Australia and relocating to Amsterdam after a legal battle that saw the company plead guilty to two charges of producing and selling DVDs that weren’t rated by the classification board.
abbywinters.com is known for producing adult content featuring amateur Australian girls.
In a post on the abbywinters.com message board, company CEO Garion Hall said that instead of fighting a costly, protracted legal battle to set new case law he decided to move to a location where he could continue his operation without the threat of legal hassles.
“We have always believed the law to be gray in this area, and the law had not been properly tested in this regard,” Hall said. “We could have spent many thousands of dollars in attempting to define the laws but this would have involved additional time and resources that the company could ill afford, therefore, the company plead guilty to the two charges.
“Our [defense attorney] made submissions about the nature of our business, that we are reputable, well managed, have excellent systems and protocols in place, and have been operating openly since our inception 10 years ago. The magistrate accepted all the submissions made to her by our [attorney].”
Hall said that the company stopped shooting in Australia as of May 28, after the resolution of the court case in which the company received a nominal fine. abbywinters.com plans to cease all Australian operations later this month.
Site members can rest comfortably knowing that much of the creative team will be moving with Hall to Amsterdam so the look and feel of the site will remain the same. Two of its shooters, two video editors, management team and back-office staff will be making the move.
Hall reassures his site’s members that even though it’s unlikely he will be shooting many Australian girls in Amsterdam—a key element that made the site unique—the site’s aesthetic of shooting amateur content remains the same.
“We have a variety of nationalities on the site currently, and while we're Australian people, Australia is not the only place in the world with unique, sexy, attractive, passionate, amateur models,” he said. “Chloe B, who has worked with us for several years as a model and staffer, will come with us and continue working on model recruitment and booking. We'll be using similar techniques to get a similar type of models applying, and will use the same criteria for selecting models. There will be a gradual change in the nationalities of models appearing on the site however. The accents will change.
“But also, like Australia, Europe is a melting pot of nationalities and travelers, and we expect to significantly increase the variety from shoot to shoot, while holding true to our values.”
Updates to abbywinters.com will be unaffected by the move and will proceed as scheduled. The first site updates with content shot in Europe expects to be posted by mid-September.
