We received a text yesterday from a former male talent from last year. In his text, he demands that we remove a HJ scene we published with him in it, because he was under the impression that we would.. not publish it...?
The video is a casting couch themed HJ that was his first ever shoot and is over a year old now, and he is just now bringing this up? I suspect it has a lot to do with the fact that we stopped booking him for scenes late last year because of his performance issues.
While he says he wants it taken down because "he doesn't like the way he looks in it and he looks better now", he also accused us of telling him the scene was just for evaluation purposes and that we wouldn't publish or monetize it.
While we knew that was not true, we are huge on consent, so we went back and spoke with all of our other male talent in the last year that did the same shoot. Not only did they say that we absolutely told them it would be published, but they also pointed out that the paperwork they all signed (including the complaining male talent) states clearly that it is for publication/distribution and grants all the rights.
When we replied back that between our due diligence, the paperwork and talking to other talent, that it was not fair to us to have wasted money and time producing the video only for him to want it taken down, and that respectfully our answer is no.
Since then, he has continued messaging and now is threatening us with a lawsuit lol. On the one hand this whole thing is BS and has made us so upset. The fact that someone who we actually tried really hard to work with and was super patient with, can act like this.. is just crazy. I guess the easiest thing is to cut the losses and just take down the video, but to be honest Im really feeling like I would love for him to try.
What should we do?
The video is a casting couch themed HJ that was his first ever shoot and is over a year old now, and he is just now bringing this up? I suspect it has a lot to do with the fact that we stopped booking him for scenes late last year because of his performance issues.
While he says he wants it taken down because "he doesn't like the way he looks in it and he looks better now", he also accused us of telling him the scene was just for evaluation purposes and that we wouldn't publish or monetize it.
While we knew that was not true, we are huge on consent, so we went back and spoke with all of our other male talent in the last year that did the same shoot. Not only did they say that we absolutely told them it would be published, but they also pointed out that the paperwork they all signed (including the complaining male talent) states clearly that it is for publication/distribution and grants all the rights.
When we replied back that between our due diligence, the paperwork and talking to other talent, that it was not fair to us to have wasted money and time producing the video only for him to want it taken down, and that respectfully our answer is no.
Since then, he has continued messaging and now is threatening us with a lawsuit lol. On the one hand this whole thing is BS and has made us so upset. The fact that someone who we actually tried really hard to work with and was super patient with, can act like this.. is just crazy. I guess the easiest thing is to cut the losses and just take down the video, but to be honest Im really feeling like I would love for him to try.
What should we do?
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