Hey looking for comments on this peculiar situation.  Regrets, not regrests...

I bought some pictures bout two years ago from this guy with a girlfreind who at the time was jet setting between here and her country on a student visa.  He approached me and said he would like to submit pictures of her wearing some of our cafepress gear, which he special ordered for her.  The pictures were quite nice, so I "bit".  For a small consideration, he gave me a release of copyright on the pictures.   I wanted a model release from the girl, for this shoot, however, The girlfreind was in Europe at the time, so the best I could do was get the photographer to sign a statement saying that he had a model release from the girl, and that he was acting as her agent.  He assured me up and down in emails which I have kept, that it was cool with her that we would use these photos for publicity.  The girl, by the way, was modeling an outfit with our company logo on it. 

Two years later, I sometimes use the pics in the internet on our sites to promote the cafepress site....  One of her girlfreinds back home saw her pics in unders and well, I think she's now regretting doing that shoot with her husband, or had no idea they would be used anywhere, she's freakin.    Oh, and now she's also the photographer's wife, they got married a few months ago. 

Just like a Birthday Girl, (Nicole Kidman movie)...I theorize she was doing all sorts of wack pictures for him to get him to marry her, and now that she's got her green card, all bets are off and she's treating him pretty badly.

The photographer release clearly states we can use the pictures on internet in good taste.  As for the statement of model release, I am not really sure if the husband got a release from his wife, or even told her what the pictures were going to be for.  I sense some language difficulty now, which I did not sense before, perhaps she was not understanding.  For the time being I have pulled off all her pictures.  But they were pretty cool pictures!  Its too bad.

Has anyone had a similar situation and how did it turn out?  Where you either got pictures from a photogrpaher, or sold your pictures, and then the model gets all upset about the context in which they are used and wants to retract their usage by you or others? 

I try to be a good sport and I really dont want to cause marital friction between them, or go after the photographer husband at this point, or have any legal difficulties whatsoever, I'd just rather let it go.

Chances are slim to none that they'd sue you, and it's even slimmer chance they'd win ... but why take the chance?  I would just take the pictures down like you did, and move on!   It's obvious there is a misunderstanding, and it's not your fault.

Just my thoughts ... there are so many models available to reshoot your product, it's not a great loss to you unless you paid a lot for those images.

-Patrick

Wha???
yipes. If you paid for the images and usage rights and now he wants them taken down?
will he give you your money back?

This was really not a lot of money.  For 100 dollars, I got a set of 200 pictures, 20 of which were of the girlfreind, of which I was using just two pictures...so this is really just a small bit of change if you were to aggregate a cost for those pics of her...because I've got a lot of mileage out of the entire set.  I woudnt ask for the money back.   Had I paid more, maybe.

Geez that's cheap!

You got a deal. Not worth discussing. You won, you're smart to take them down. Life is good.

I guess the moral of the story is: no model release=no sale.

If you would have paid $200 per image, that'd be a real problem.

I think, if some model wants to parade in her panties, that's her right.  Well, maybe there should be some sort of weight limit.