You will notice the addition of a few new AltPorn sites, some of which are doing phenomenally well, such as My Emo Bitch and Amateur Emo Girls. These sites reflect the recent popularity of ‘ex-girlfriend’ sites in online adult. They operate on the pretense that angry boyfriends upload embarrassing naked pictures of their former girlfriends for everybody to see. It’s depressing that this sub-genre is as popular as it is, but it goes to show that being popular doesn’t always mean being cool or good. These sites should still be included as they do reflect a realistic assessment of what people are looking at these days though. You may also notice APN has made a few adjustments to the AltPorn A-List. Inactive sites like RazorDolls are being removed. RazorDolls was a fun and sexy site, but it hasn’t updated in years. It was a good example of the AltPorn genre, but sending people there to join a dead site seemed wrong and/or unfair. We’ll hold out hope RD gets back on it’s feet, but for now it joins the ranks of ManicJane, FatalBeauty, SpicePlay, CityKittie, PornForPunks, and all the other dead AltPorn sites that once had interesting alternative content we’ve enjoyed.

These statistics are best evaluated as relative, rather than absolute. If you feel your favorite site gets more visitors, then consider that all sites measured probably get more visitors, as they are all measured with the same criteria. For example, judging by our own internal stats measures AltPorn.net gets an average of 101,000 unique visitors a month, but QuantCast only counts 57,868, and we’re actually Quantified. Here are the AltPorn Estimated Visitors Rankings for mid November, 2009:

MyEmoBitch.com, AmateurEmoGirls.com, SuicideGirls.com, GodsGirls.com, AltPorn.net, BurningAngel.com, BlueBlood.net, RubberDollies.com, BarelyEvil.com, GothicSluts.com, CrazyBabe.com, BurntFilm.com, PunkGrl.com, GeekGirlsOnline.com, DarkPlay.net, EroticBPM.net, DeviantNation.com, BlueBlood.com, BellaVendetta.com, PunkRockGirlfriend.com, NoFauxxx.com, InkyGirls.com, RazorDolls.com, PunkPinups.com, SuperCult.com, StaggStreet.com, BrokenDollz.com, Lazerbunny.com, EroticBPM.com, FuckMeInTheBathroom.com, BigBoobsAreCool.com, CumOnMyTattoo.com, PovPunx.com, PaybackBaby.com, HoleAndAHeartbeat.com

I know you probably won’t, but if you could, I’d like for the post about XXXXXXXXXX to be removed. See.. I’m “XXXXX” and although it’s something I did knowingly, I’d prefer it not be marketed on high traffic sites unless someone is paying you to do so.. then it is out of my hands. I did what I had to do to get through a pregnancy in a shitty economy where neither myself nor my boyfriend had jobs.

If you can find it in your morale to take it down, I would find that very considerate of you. Thank you.

This brought up a few questions, so I sent them out to her in order to make what I feel is the best judgment. Here are the questions and answers:

What other sites have you modeled for? Do you feel bad about all of them, or just this one?

SuicideGirls. I’ve also done tons of other work earlier in my career including magazine work for Hustler, BarelyLegal. I did a set for Digital Dream girls as well. I’ve gone under the name Samantha, Pistolita and most recently XXXXX.. for this site. I only regret this one, simply because it involves my child. And unfortunately I had no other income options at the time, being pregnant I couldn’t get a job before needing maternity leave. I was between a rock and a hard place at the time, and have already been paid for all my work with the site. So no royalties are given to me from member joins. Therefore, I would rather not see it advertised.

Did you give the money you made from doing the job back? If not, do you plan to?

Like I previously stated, I can’t take away what I did. The money I made during the 4 months of shooting for the site got me through the last 4 months and the first 2 months of my childs life. So I can’t just give back the money. That’s $XXXX that I don’t have anymore. I can’t take the site down. I just ask that you not advertise it on your site. I’ve had 3 friends already see it and ask me about it.

How do we know it’s really you? People write to us more frequently than you might guess, pretending to be various models. We are more likely to honor your request if we know it is genuine.

I’m not going to post the results of that last one because it would be creepy, but I do believe it is her, so that answer was satisfactory.

Starting with the obvious or maybe rhetorical at least, why does it seem like it’s always a SuicideGirl in this kind of drama? Experienced or not, every model should really know by now that they should assume their friends are going to see what they do and that should always be a consideration. If you don’t know, now you know.

But, beyond that, she doesn’t get royalties? Duh. We hear this ‘no royalties’ complaint a lot from girls, but that’s almost never the terms they worked under in the first place. Very few sites have anything resembling a royalty system and if that is what a model wants, she should have negotiated that when the deal was made to begin with. It doesn’t matter how long the job is, one hour, a half day, or even four months, if she takes a flat fee job, she gets exactly that, a flat fee. The world isn’t evil for not giving her something she didn’t have a deal to get in the first place. The model on the cover of Vogue doesn’t get a percentage of sales, and she doesn’t get to pull the magazine off all the news racks just because she doesn’t like the dress they hired her to wear. I have a lot of respect for the hard working models that put a lot into what they do, but I’ve also seen too many that quickly start accusing others of being immoral or crooked whenever they don’t get whatever they want, even if it wasn’t what they agreed to from the start.

You want to run your own site? Then run your own site. You want to get royalties? Then make a partnership deal that includes royalties. You want to get paid hourly, or a day rate even, for modeling work? That’s good too. But do not whine to the world that you didn’t get what you were never supposed to get in the first place. It makes it hard to respect you as an intelligent person.

Some girls partner to do their sites with professionals, and some of those girls get a percentage of the earnings, but most of the time, it’s work for hire modeling, sometimes followed by work for hire participation, if they are lucky. Here is how it works: The site owner pays her to model, then pays a photographer and/or videographer to shoot with her, then pays retoucher/editor to make the media nice looking, then pays designer and coder to build a good looking salable site, then pays the host to put the site up and cover bandwidth usages, and then pays another designer to build sales tools like promotional galleries, banners, then sometimes even pays public relations reps and/or affiliate reps to get the word out about the site launch, etc. and at the end of the day, they hope that all those costs come out to be less than they earn back by having ‘high traffic sites’ like APN promote the finished project to people who might be interested enough to join it. That is a lot of work and a lot of investment into what will hopefully turn into a successful site. If a model gets her cut and then tells all the big sites not to promote what was created with her content, that is immoral. It’s bad business at the very least. Everybody has bills to pay. Her child doesn’t deserve to eat any more than all the other people doing their job to put food on their table.

Models, a word of advice. Think about what you are doing before you agree to do it. Think about why you are doing it and whether you will be happy once it is done. You owe the people you are working with honest commitment to your agreements. Creating erotic media is not evil or immoral and if you think it is, you have no business in this field at all. Taking the money and burning the people who hired you to do a job is wrong. It is wrong to be accusing other people of being immoral just because you selectively changed your mind on an agreement as well.

Read the article here and see the hot free gallery here.

The underlying story of how Philip Warner, AKA Lithium Picnic is back to cheerfully promoting and defending SuicideGirls however is really disappointing. When he found himself at odds with his exclusionary employer SuicideGirls, he cried far and wide, pleading for everyone in the scene to take up his cause with his ‘Free Lithium Picnic’ merch machine and calls for benefit art shows and donation drives, etc. There wasn’t a place on the internet that someone could mention that they kind of think maybe altporn bully SuicideGirls is a ‘blight on our scene’ or whatever without at least a handful of LP supporters and questionable sock puppets interjecting ‘Free Lithium Picnic’ at every turn. Yet somehow the rhetoric seemed mismatched with what few facts had emerged about the $100,000 breach of contract case SuicideGirls had brought against Philip. Although we have been supportive of getting the facts out there as best we can in the past, we’ve never really bought in to the ensuing hype, despite the well intentioned efforts of sites like DeviantNation, who went so far as to pass along a neat little ‘Free Lithium Picnic’ chipin donation flash widgets that they wanted sites like APN to to run so that Philip could generate more funds.

One of the main reasons we do not cover SuicideGirls more often here at APN is that we’ve seen SuicideGirls notoriously controlling contracts and frankly, they don’t look that difficult to find yourself in breach of. I could see participating in legal fee fund raisers and other charity events once the court found Philip Warner not guilty, but if he was guilty of breach, then giving him money would just be a waste. APN attempted to interview Lithium Picnic about what the fight with SG was actually over, but we were informed that we would only be able to interview Apnea instead, as he was not supposed to discuss legal issues pertaining to the case. Not that we ever mind talking to hot and adorable Apnea and she was very helpful and informative in every interaction. However if, like APN, you have been wondering about the actual details of this legal battle, Lux Nightmare’s Fleshbot post links to where Amelia G over at BlueBlood.net wrote SuicideGirls vs Lithium Picnic Lawsuit Settled, which is an excellent deconstruction of the lawsuit and the community’s response to it. The feeling over there seems to be that Apnea is innocent, but LP is at the very least guilty of selling out the principles he asked so many to sacrifice for and support. Not that we mind if ultra sexy and cute Apnea turns out to be the only good guy in the whole legal mess.

I guess what I’m saying is that I’ve never been 100% convinced Lithium Picnic was actually innocent. He worked for SuicideGirls for a long time. He was there when they we’re pulling all sorts of shady business with their models. One falling out among a clan of bad people doesn’t suddenly transform someone into being the good guy. It would be nice if he were innocent, but there was a strong chance he actually wasn’t. We were looking forward to the court’s decision to make everything clear.

I’d like to apologize, on behalf of everyone at APN. We’ve all simultaneously been overwhelmed with project work. I hear we may be interviewing for some more writer positions in the near future, so keep on the lookout for that. As always, we want to hear from you about new sites that should be ranked and added to the charts.

* Rank: Works like Alexa, lower is better.
** EMV: Estimated Monthly Visitors

Although SuicideGirls traffic continues a downward trend, they have risen one spot in the rankings to regain second place, behind BlueBlood‘s GothicSluts, edging out BlueBlood’s punky BarelyEvil. NaughtyFlipside managed to pick up a few spots, even though they have not updated in what seems like forever. We, AltPorn.net, have fallen a couple spots, probably due to more sporadic updates around the holidays and finals. DarkPlay seems to have gotten an interesting boost, while DeviantNation and NoFauxxx seem to be trending down this month.

* Rank: Works like Alexa, lower is better.
** EMV: Estimated Monthly Visitors

The December Compete numbers are a little more interesting than the Alexa measures, or at least there is a little more positional movement. BlueBlood’s GothicSluts, as well as their BarelyEvil sites have moved up significantly in estimated monthly visitors taking spots two and three respectively, knocking CrazyBabe down to position four this month. We (AltPorn.net) have actually grown in visitors this month, up 55.4% over last month (six weeks really) and up an impressive 383.4% for the year. BrokenDolls is also bumping up significantly, while InkyGirls have fallen off a number of spots. Compete.com still doesn’t have measures for the newcomer sites PunkGrl and LazerBunny, which I feel they should have by now, so no measures for them yet.

* Rank: Works like Alexa, lower is better.
** EMV: Estimated Monthly Visitors

Interestingly enough, even though the Compete.com estimated monthly visitors seems to be a little off from the QuantCast estimates, the sites stack up remarkably similar in rankings. A few sites which are closely ranked switch places from chart to chart, but for the most part, we’re getting a fairly consistent snapshot of the state of multi-girl Alt genre site traffic and popularity. Compete.com offers another set of interesting data points, revealing individual site trends, measured on a monthly and yearly basis. This gives an idea of which sites are up or down from their previous month and year.

* Rank: Works like Alexa, lower is better.
** EMV: Estimated Monthly Visitors

QuantCast seems to have made adjustments to eliminate the traffic/rankings anomaly we noticed last month, where actual quantified publishers such as AltPorn.net and Deviant Nation took a hit in rankings that seemed to be out of line with our estimated monthly traffic (EMV), but it looks like the result is that they may have simply lowered the estimate. We’re still scratching our heads on that.

“Why would you aggregate Blueblood’s sites together and somehow miss the fact that many sites on your list are also part of other companie’s holdings, such as Naughty America, Gods Girls, EroticBPM, etc, etc…” – Anony Mouse

Blue Blood’s overall footprint in this genre is in fact very large, larger than I had previously realized. So, if I had aggregated the statistics and rolled together Blue Blood ranking statistics, their actual QuantCast rank would have been on the very top of the chart, ringing in at precisely 4,465, with an impressive estimated monthly traffic (EMV) result of 379,471. But, that’s not how the study was done. If it had been, Blue Blood would in fact have topped the chart, being sizably more popular that SuicideGirls.com even.

It is also clear that Anony Mouse doesn’t understand what a networked membership site really is, so I think it’s best to explain. A membership in Naughty Flipside actually also automatically gets the member additional access to every site in the Naughty America family of sites, such as Naughty Office, Naughty Bookworms, My Friends Hot Mom, etc. Thus, it is a network membership site. However, Naughty Flipside is the only site that Naughty America does that really truly fits in the AltPorn genre. Some people here at AltPorn.net do enjoy some of the nerdy girl content on Naughty America’s Naughty Bookworms, but it’s not something we’d consider totally in the AltPorn genre. These rankings are done on a site by site basis, for each site being measured, not the overall network.

GodsGirls’ parent company NicheBucks, on the other hand, doesn’t even include GodsGirls in their affiliate program, let alone their network of sites. So, as a member, you would not get any additional membership to AuntJudys.com, OlderWomen.com, BigOlderWomen.com, OfficeGals.com, Twinks.com, or even FullBush.com. So, even if we were measuring the traffic and popularity of networked membership sites, instead of the individual sites we actually are measuring, counting the overall NicheBucks site portfolio wouldn’t make any sense.

Business wise, EroticBPM, formerly RaverPorn could be considered to be connected to the Spiceplay site, which was also in our study until it went on hiatus, as well as FatalBeauty for that matter, but they too are not networked as far as membership goes. This still does mean that Killshot could be considered to have a decently large footprint within this genre though.

Although they are still counted and measured individually, Blue Blood does actually network the memberships for each of their sites listed in this AltPorn multi-girl site study. The statistics were not aggregated in any way, but a membership in any one of their sites on that chart, such as Blue Blood or BarelyEvil automatically grants access to all their other sites on the chart, such as RubberDollies and GothicSluts. The four sites they have on that chart don’t even comprise all their alt-site properties, but all their sites are in this genre. I just happened to mention in my last post that Blue Blood seemed to be pretty big, and really, they clearly are. Nothing was skewed or spun or aggregated or fudged at all.

* Archive.org info for paid membership sites reflects the first available record of the existance of the join page and/or actual members area navigation. This reflects a sites actual ability to serve memberships to the public.

** In cases of no reply from site staff, owners, or operators, the launch date refelects the earliest record of a join page and/or actual members area navigation on Archive.org

Sorry the circumstances for this feature are somewhat less positive. We hate to see talented creative people spending their energy fighting for their livelihood. Can you explain for the people not already intimately involved, what precipitated the split, and ensuing $100,000 lawsuit, between Philip and SuicideGirls?

There’s a lot of speculation floating around that it had something to do with the rise of his career and popularity outside of SG and the fact that he was shooting many of the models from GodsGirls and other competitors for his personal projects. Missy sent him demands that he could not shoot SGs for anything outside of SG without their permission, citing his “affiliations” as the reason they could “no longer trust him”. He never breached the contract he was under, so he pushed back and told them that wasn’t in his contract and continued to shoot whoever her wanted.

Ultimately Philip was booted off of the site back in November for shooting me for apneatic.com and allegedly owning and running my site. SG did no fact checking and made no attempt to inquire about it or resolve this with him. He’s been shooting with me (and dozens of other models) since 2003 in standard “trade-for-prints” exchanges. He retains the copyright and the models are allowed to use the images, standard in the industry. I used images he shot on my paysite, he did not and does not have a direct relationship with my site.

As for the ownership claim, he helped me register the name for my site in 2003 before it was a paysite, I even had the URL of apneatic.com posted at the top of my SG profile. There were no issues with it at the time. After they kicked me off the site I decided to open a paysite of my own since alt modeling is one of the major ways I support myself in college. Philip just registered the name for me he did not materially participate in the business, and he said as much to Paul Loving in his reply. This was a clerical error and has been corrected.

Philip had a very specific clause in his contract that allowed him to shoot for “single girl personality based sites” since the new contract they asked him to sign would have been in default from the moment it was signed. He was already shooting on his own with other well known models with sites like Masuimi, Darenzia, Kumi, Scar, etc. I guess it took them eleven months to get angry about it? It doesn’t get more “single girl” than my site, I don’t even post affiliate galleries, it’s “all Apnea, all the time.”

I don’t think anything about this lawsuit makes sense. It seems to me that this is more about who has the deeper pockets and trying to keep him from opening his own site or working for a major competitor than it is about my site.

How long had Philip been working with SuicideGirls, and all told, how many photo sets had he done for them in total?

Our first set went live in November of 2003, since then he’s shot over seventy five sets for the site.

What other sorts of work did they also have him do in his role as staff photographer?

It was not in his job description, but he created and maintained a Suicidegirls Myspace Fan Page (not group) to showcase his SG photos and pimp his affiliate codes. He did this on his own with no input from SG before they recognized Myspace as a viable marketing channel. This was the first big SG presence on myspace. It had samples of his SG photography and links to SG with his affiliate codes. He spent hours a week reply and fielding emails to the model applications and once it got up to about 30,000 members they demanded he give it to them. He pushed back but was nice enough to give them the user name and password to send out bulletins and was doing it for them but they changed his info and tried to take it. He did a password change and explained that if they didn’t want him using the SG name and logo on his fan page he would be more than happy to change it to a Lithium Picnic fan group but then Sean called him screaming (I was sitting next to him, I could hear him screaming) threatening to sue him. He settled in an agreement to keep his codes and a certain amount of his photos on the page but shortly after they breached the agreement and got myspace to move all of the members to another page. He lost a great deal of promotion not to mention the income from the affiliate links they removed.

See for yourself, it’s been a ghost town since they cheated him: http://www.myspace.com/sggroup I suspect they will delete it soon due to the upcoming litigation. It’s been documented and screencapped.

We’ve seen other SuicideGirls staff photographers complain that they still shoot sets for the SuicideGirls organization essentially on spec, what was the process of shooting for them like from start to finish, or from booking to getting the check?

I think most everyone shoots on spec. Even if they ask a photographer to shoot someone there’s no guarantee they will take it. SuicideGirls has withheld his paychecks on multiple occasions until he would sign updated contracts, send in additional hi-res images , or would agree to new terms requiring additional work. His checks were usually paid much later than the terms specified in his agreements.

Reading over Philip’s December 11th letter to SuicideGirls’ attorney Paul Loving, Philip outlined the pre-existance of the general photographic style SuicideGirls currently publish, noting for example the pre-SG publication Blue Blood. Are the SuicideGirls staff and legal counsel seriously trying to claim some sort of copyright on modern street-fashion oriented nude pin-up photography? What is their rationale?

Your guess is as good as mine. In the Godsgirls case the tried to claim ownership of the color pink, so it wouldn’t surprise me.

There has been a lot of speculation on the topic of what exactly SuicideGirls actively considers competition, and this is important because they are known to advocate certain behaviour towards supposed competitors. Since both yourself and Philip have been working with them for so long, can you share some insight into exactly who and what they really consider competitive, from a policy perspective?

I don’t know. SG is so huge, I can’t imagine that any alt porn site could really threaten their business. I think in Philip’s situation, SG is just making an example out of him for shooting girls from other sites for his personal projects and for standing up to them as much as he did. This seems to be more about keeping him from making his own membership site or shooting for another big alt site than it is about them having $100,000 in real damages or being threatened by my site.

Given that SuicideGirls has a fairly widely accepted reputation for their comprehensive exclusionary, and some even say laughably overreaching, contracts, how surprised were you and Philip by the their action against you? Were they easier to work with early on, when you and Philip started working with them? What was it that motivated you to work with an organization notorious for doing just this sort of thing?

Sean asked us to join the site in 2003. There were no exclusive contracts back then, the rule was more like, “If you shoot for another site your sets won’t go live on SG as often.” I remember the day it happened, ex SG Anouck made a fuss about the rule because she was on Manic Jane or something like that, then staff gave her the boot and created the exclusivity rule. Lucky for me, all I ever signed was a model release in 2003 . It wasn’t until I was kicked off of the site in 2005 that the contracts were ever made. As far as being surprised about Philip being served papers, we weren’t surprised at all, just disappointed. We are not a threat to SG, we want nothing more than to be disassociated with them. In my opinion, this is all based on a foundation of greed and spite.

Is your site, Apneatic.com, going to stay live during the dispute, because we’re sure a lot of members and supporters, ourselves included, would really hate to see them get away with pressuring you to close it down over this.

My site isn’t going anywhere! In fact my web designer asked me yesterday if he should halt on the redesign of the site until the case blows over, but I told him to keep building. Philip is still working on his own projects too, as much as this has affected our lives, we’re still loving life and working on our own projects.

In a lot of your publicly posted explanations of the dispute, you state that the suit is over SG’s contractual objection to his alleged ownership and involvement in your site, Apneatic.com . But on November 22nd, he publicly announced on his Lithium Picnic Studios site, that he was about to add quite a few potentially competitive features. He stated that lithiumpicnic.com was gearing up to become a “membership” site with member blogs, member photos, forums, friends lists, along with photo and video updates and much more. The very next day after that announcement, SG issued their disputed “Creative Services Agreement” to Philip, which he claims to have not signed. Then, on November 24th, the day after they issued their “Creative Services Agreement”, he announced that he had left SuicideGirls to pursue other projects. Given the turn of events over those three days, it’s odd to read that the dispute is somehow over your site. Is it fair to think that maybe the dispute is more about a preemptive move on their part to protect themselves against what would obviously be a more competitively featured venture than just your solo project?

He was kicked off SG with no explanation. After 3 years of hard work and promoting SG he was booted from the site without warning, the girls were notified that sets from him were no longer going to be accepted, and his 1,500+ member fan group was deleted. Neither he or the members were offered any explanation. His emails and IMs to SG staff went unanswered. Missy blocked his IMs from three different accounts. All he requested was an explanation and an opportunity to discuss what was happening. About a week later he got the breach document from their attorneys and the demand for $100,000. In response to the flood of emails and inquires and in an attempt to save face he made the simple statement that he was no longer working with SG and was moving on. They are still trying to hold him to a contract that prohibits him from and “disparaging remarks” he was advised by his attorney to keep it simple.

As far as competitive features are concerned, the bottom line is that it is not a paysite. He plans to someday open a site with beautiful nude photos in the style he was shooting before and during his time with SG, but the site will probably be based more on the photography and lighting diagrams and the technical aspects. A place where photographers could join and check out lighting diagrams and talk shop about cameras and stuff. He is always flooded with emails from new photographers asking his advice on stuff, so he figured he might as well start getting paid for it! I think it’s a wonderful idea. No, he never had any intention of opening an SG “girl based” competitor site. We’re leaving that fish for Godsgirls and DeviantNation to fry. But to answer your question, I don’t think this has much to do at all with me or my site, that was just the only half-excuse they could use to sue him since he never really violated his contract.

Tell us about the general public response you’ve been getting so far to the news of this suit.

We’ve been overwhelmed and renewed by the show of support and outrage. We’ve been especially moved by the public and private show of support from SG members, models, and even certain staff. It’s very clear as day that their argument is flimsy, unsubstantiated and malicious. It has never been my intent to persuade anyone to hate Suicidegirls, I wouldn’t wish that kind of energy upon anyone. I just want people to be informed and I want to be left alone. All of that projection is still helping their business. I haven’t visited the site in many moons; if people really didn’t like the site, I wish they would just stop going and stop talking about it. Then maybe Suicidegirls will either quietly go away and stop suing everyone.