On Monday afternoon, a San Diego judge ruled in a pretrial hearing that the state of California has enough evidence to proceed with its case against Kevin Bollaert, the alleged operator of the “revenge porn” site ugotposted.com.

Bollaert, 27, was arrested in December of last year and was charged with 31 felony counts of identity theft, extortion, and conspiracy for running a site that asked users to upload nude photos of victims along with their full name, age, location, and a Facebook link. Investigators said that when victims would ask Bollaert to take the pictures down, he would direct them to a separate website that he created, changemyreputation.com, where they would be asked to pay a fee, usually between $300 and $350. Bollaert himself said he made about $900 a month on advertising revenue from the site. The California government alleges he made more than $10,000 off of ugotposted.

Sites like Bollaert's often believe they are protected by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which prevents operators of websites from being held responsible for the content posted by their users. Bollaert pleaded not guilty at his arraignment in January.

In an unusually long pretrial hearing that ended yesterday, San Diego County Superior Court Judge David M. Gill asked that the state present a large amount of the evidence it planned to use against Bollaert in trial. Bollaert's case is one of the first criminal prosecutions of an operator of a revenge porn site, which may be the reason for the extended pretrial proceedings. Yesterday, he ruled that the state would be allowed to pursue all 31 felony charges against Bollaert in court later this year.

California recently made it a misdemeanor to post identifiable nude photos of someone online without their permission, but Bollaert was not accused of that infraction. He will have a second arraignment on July 16 where he will be allowed to enter his plea again, and if he doesn't try to settle or plead guilty, the case will proceed to trial.

In January of this year, revenge porn mogul Hunter Moore was arrested by federal authorities for allegedly paying someone to hack into victims' e-mail accounts and steal images to put on his notorious site isanyoneup.com. Also in February, Casey E. Meyering, 28, an alleged revenge porn site operator based in Oklahoma, was arrested and extradited to California for apparently facilitating the posting “of more than 400 sexually explicit photos of Californians” and extorting them before taking the pictures down.