Exactly. I don't negotiate with models as that can be construed as extortion, so I pass them on to my attorney. They typically have to buy the copyright, and that's a fee plus attorney's fees, none of which I'm paying. So we're looking at 5-8k at least that goes in my pocket. They never have the right to see a release form. Ever, except in discovery if she wants to take it that far. Attorneys who take these cases are usually just getting blown by the whore & fire off a few letters thinking that most people will just cave at the very sight of a letter on an attorneys letter head. This ain't my first rodeo.
Ds

go to hungary and put a bullet on his ass

First contact was made by a lawyer, not the model? That wouldn't sit well with me. Normally that would be costing her hundreds and eventually thousands of dollars to have a lawyer chase down content on hundreds of sites, and it seems very unlikely that she's paying for it that way.

Also, why have signed releases at all if all a model has to do is ask later to have their stuff removed and it's gone? Simply taking stuff down on request really does render the signing and keeping of releases useless.

Had she just contacted the OP herself and asked nicely and with believable reasons I doubt there'd have been an issue. But outright caving in to this request the way it was done does no one any favors. The lawyer goes on thinking he's a baddass, the model gets to have her cake and eat it too, and the actual owner of the content is put out to a large degree.

The better way to go would be to school the lawyer, teach the model a life lesson, maintain your business in accordance with the spirit of why releases get signed.

50 bucks and a cigar says that she met this chump at a strip club, he was bragging he was an attorney, and she sucked his cock for a letter to be fired off. She'll keep sucking his dick until she realizes that the content isn't being removed and the next step is filing suit which will cost money. Once she hears she will have to spend money and there is no guarantee that the content will come down, she will stop sucking his cock and that will be that.
Duke

Just got me a new take down request from a *model*.

The page is dynamically created so website.com/some-letters/ = page no matter what is input.

They want that removed because thye can type in their name and a page is created (even though it has ZERO to do with them!).

She appears to be a lawyer (antitrust) herself, so it's possible he's a workmate, or perhaps her boyfriend/husband.

Agreed. The human approach would have been a better start, rather than coming in with all guns blazing, using convoluted legal references and threats of lawsuits.

Wonder if she speaks English and whether she knows what he's sending people?

Take it down. :2 cents:

As I tell clients all the time when they receive annoying cease and desists letters with questionable claims:

"You can fight it and probably win, but you'll spend hours upon hours dealing with it, and potentially need to pay lawyers to write letters back and forth (or worse, litigation) at the tune of $300+/hour. Model photos are commodities, i.e., a dime a dozen, so take the 5 minutes to remove the image and move on."

Close thread.

Are you an attorney? If so, I'm not surprised by the bad advice. You're missing the point that there is almost never anything to fight or any reason to run scared like that. When a former model calls up or sends an email or rarely sends a form letter from an attorney friend they only hope that you'll immediately cave in. 99.9% of them have no money and zero intention of ever following up with actual litigation.

It's real easy to politely tell former models that you have sold, re-sold and licensed the content a million different ways to entities and web sites out of your control and that it's completely out of your hands if they have your number and call you up on the telephone to put you on the spot. If they email, or have a form letter sent, it's real easy to just ignore it completely as you can almost guarantee that absolutely nothing will happen after that.

And, as I mentioned earlier- if it only does take you five minutes to "pull content", then you have no business to speak of and no idea what you are doing as a webmaster.

Fuck no!
If I paid a girl hundreds, or more, dollars, and at some later time she "regrets" it....LOL!
FUCK THAT!

It is just a cost/benefit analysis, and valuing your TIME. Let's say you have a photo you paid $XYZ for, and years later, someone brings a bogus claim but won't press it if you take it down. If you value your time at more than $100/hour let's say (i.e., instead of dealing with frivolous bull shit you could be making $100/hour elsewhere), and the time value you have to spend dealing with a cease and desist (or litigation) is more than what the image is worth (minus the money you already made), then you "settle" (remove the image).

You gotta take emotion out of it and look at it in dollars and cents. For example, a dude claims age discrimination against your company and you know it is complete bullshit. The dude will take a $5K severance and sign a release agreement, or you can spend 100 hours of your time in depositions, paying lawyers, etc., for an uncertain outcome. Most rationale business folks who can afford the $5K will pay that instead of the latter. A perfectly logical business decision, i.e., "don't sweat the small stuff".

Now if the image in question is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars or whatever (doubtful), then of course, perhaps you fight it. But again, I sense we are talking about an easily replaced image. So you can spin your wheels, ask GFY for help, call lawyers, and waste a lot of time, or pull the image from the database....

And finally, of course you can play poker and say, "I'll ignore, she won't press it." That's a reasonable approah and should be considered, but if you are wrong, it can be a painful lost pot.

The savvy folks on this thread are like, "who cares, take it down and move on." They value their time more than dealing with frivolous bullshit.

Sounds like you don't film models :upsidedow

$XYZ can be $500 or $100,000. If the image, video or whatever isn't that valuable, unless you value your time at minimum wage, I'd just take it down (I tend to take letters on law firm letterhead more seriously then letters from layman).

If it some high value image/video or you paid a ton for this particular piece of content, then of course, you evaluate the cost of fighting it and make a decision.

A common mistake business owners make is they don't value their time. On emotion alone, they'll spend countless hours on rather trivial shit.

But they, if they want to spend $300+/hour to help an attorney pay his mortgage, by all means have it! The dirty little secret in the legal community is that some "rain makers" will tell you, "she has no case! Hire us and we'll fight it!" You end up paying them $2K to draft a response to the demand letter, and $50K+ to litigate it. The good lawyers are the ones that help you do a cost benefit analysis, and don't urge you to fight just so you can hire them and pay them a lot of money....

Sounds like advice of a spoiled child who has never had to run a business. You buy commodities. It comes at a price. Production costs have nothing to do with buying a photo. Models also continually demand their content be removed. You don't even seem to understand the basic economics of running a small business... or the cost of caving to every other model shot who later wants her content removed or the cost of removing it from paysites and promo materials and the additional harm it does to sales, recurring sales and so on.

Odd, because I run a successful business.

My advice isn't to be taken in a vacuum (I assumed people would understand the primary point, i.e., time is money). Of course, if you are receiving take down requests everyday from models, then yes, you analyze the situation (and costs) accordingly. But that doesn't sound like the case from the OP, i.e., he received a single letter on law firm letterhead from a single model.

And of course, when you analyze the "cost" you obviously consider the cost it takes to "take down", especially if the image is on multiple sites (e.g., affiliates).

Next time I'll use crayons and pictures (and perhaps an abucus) so you can see the point a little more clearer.

Look you annoying cunt... You make a case for taking down a photo or a video (you used the singular) because you have no real clue whats being discussed or what the problem actually is. It's a constant problem for anyone that produces content. It's not about single images. Its about content sets that are sold and resold, uploaded to tube sites, used in promotion materials, leased to other companies, used in members areas which people paid to see and so on. There is no "take down the image".

It's not as simple as accepting your totally credible premise that lawyers are douchebags and just taking them down because "time is money" as you have no fucking clue how expensive it can get and what the actual costs are... not to mention the fact that its almost always impossible to remove the content from the web as it ends up scattered all over the place, making it a moot point and impossibility - just so the douche lawyer who finally got a skank to suck his cock and wants to defend the new love of his life's honor and get her 100 man, triple penetration gangbang taken offline forever so he can take her home to meet mom is way out of line. This is why many producers have a clause allowing the model to buy the content back and its made clear that whats online is always going to stay online no matter what.

But wow.. thanks for stating the obvious and letting people know they need to weigh the costs as a followup. I'm sure no one has ever thought of that without your crayon illustrations. Thats fucking brilliant advice to follow up your blanket advice that has no bearing on the reality of the problem, its scope and the actual costs involved - which makes your advice not only irrelevant but indescribably shitty.

Dude, you do realize that the OP said, "he's an affiliate" and he is going to take the images down. So in other words, I think its fair to assume that the OP isn't Steve Hirsh at Vivid who received a letter from Sunny Leone's legal counsel and consequently he has to decide whether to spend a gazillioin dollars to remove her image from DVDs, websites, marketing materials, DVDs, Blu-Ray, etc.? Perhaps reading comprehension and context isn't your strongest trait, but Jesus dude, get over yourself. It seems like you are the one giving shitty advice, i.e., Rowan the affiliate should cringe at the prospect of losing millions of dollars due to taking down an image which, SURPRISE, he already said he would take down (hope he recovers from the millions of dollars lost and countless man hours lost)

Or maybe he just takes the image down (on the sites he controls--which apparently he has done or intends to do), calls/email the provider, and has a cup of coffee. But I guess that just makes too much sense.

You are also addressing producers like Jim Gunn. And the "cost" extends well beyond a photographers time.

You are telling people AS AN ATTORNEY "hey, better just give in to extortionists". Not laying out the law and rights of the parties as an obvious legal starting point, but rather just skipping to the dispensing of ill informed legal advice (which is really accounting advice) with incomplete facts and you do seem to be interested in helping people avoid extortionists or protect themselves as I do not see that advice... and I suspect that is probably how you at least in part, earn your living. And still, you have no clue what this costs producers, affiliates and everyone using the content and talking about cost/benefit as if no one has ever thought of that but a smarmy low rent attorney freshly graduated from the Guatemalan Institute of Goat Herding and General Legal Studies.

This is making me wonder... can you post on a forum and chase ambulances? Can you chase more than one ambulance at once while you dispense painfully obvious and uninformed advice as an "attorney"? How many ambulances do you manage to catch in one day? I mean... you know, whats a ballpark average?

Again, reading comprehension. I never said I was an attorney, and I wasn't giving legal advice. I gave a pragmatic opinion. While some posters post, "don't give in to that stupid slut!" you rant on someone that simplys says, "be pragmatic".

As for your ambulance chasing ramblings, how am I supposed to respond, "sticks and stones will break my bones and names will never hurt me." Are you in third grade lol?

Just come up with something better than "cunt". That's so 90s.

Oh... i'm sorry. I just read where you were giving your clients legal advice as to how to respond to a legal threat of a licensed attorney and made the wild assumption that you were qualified to do so.

Sorry. My bad. Crazy assumption on my part... Because after all, its not legal to practice law and dispense legal advice if your not an attorney.

Hey... wait a minute...

Yea, a ton of detailed legal advice in my original post, with a complete breakdown of the DMCA, IU.S. and Hungarian copyright law, and the international legal implications (full citations and all.). Sorry for the confusion.

"You can fight it and probably win, but you'll spend hours upon hours dealing with it, and potentially need to pay lawyers to write letters back and forth (or worse, litigation) at the tune of $300+/hour. "

Uhmm.... no. You misquoted yourself. You said you advise them to take the images down and move on. Thats not a "pragmatic opinion". By your own words, thats your advice as to how to respond to a legal threat from a licensed attorney.

...."so take the 5 minutes to remove the image and move on."

Close thread.

I can do this all night dipshit. I can't sleep anyway.

Ahh..got it. Telling people that for certain matters to (1) not "lawyer up" and (2) deal with an issue pragmatically, is a no no. Oh shit, all the people who responded to the OP are either lawyers or guilty of practicing law while not being a licensed attorney! I better call the local police. Thanks for pointing that out.

Yes, you instruct people you call "clients" with whom you presumably have a close working relationship with and direct their response to a legal threat. Thank you for the added clarification.

For everyoine else with similar advice, watch out, thesqueeler may report you to local law enforcement for the unauthorized practice of law lol....

"As I tell clients" lol. C'mon neeeeeegro, pls
Ds

i cant afford to use a DMCA, to enforce "model regret"... :(

LOL...if we ALL took down content that these bitches "regret"....there'd BE no fucking porn on the internet.
If you have a legit, signed, lock-stock-and-barrel model release...fuck these chicks that "get a regret" or some new overbearing boyfriend.

....especially the ones that STILL keep shooting nudes, LOL!

Great response Joe!