A couple days ago I received a takedown notice from Ceartas DMCA regarding some scenes from Chaos Men.
It started by saying… “The reported websites [mine] do not provide means to contact them directly or remain unresponsive to our DMCA notices” yet at the bottom of each of the pages they mentioned was a “Contact Us” link that linked directly to the email they were using to contact me. In other words they probably used the Contact Us link that they said was missing to contact me. So they basically started the whole process by libeling me to my face. But whatever, I could overlook that…
The primary claim was that a model (“Dalton”) was underage at the time videos were produced. They specified pages for two scenes as well as a general model profile page that referenced a bunch of other scenes.
They also mentioned that Chaos Men had taken down the scenes.
I promptly took down the two scenes but got back to them saying I was confused because they didn’t mention the other scenes, and some of the scenes were released 3 years after the initial scenes - I doubted he was underage over the entire 3 year period.
They then responded telling me to take down everything - and included screenshots of conversations with Gamma where the model being underage was never mentioned. Instead Ganna took down the scenes “as a courtesy”, and made it clear that they couldn’t be bothered to send a mass email to their affiliates to ask them to take down the content (something they’d probably do if the content was truly illegal).
To me that meant the claim of the model being underage was probably a flat out lie. I responded that it was illegal to put false information in a DMCA request. So their request appeared to be both libelous and illegal.
At that point they responded that the model had told them he was underage and hadn’t mentioned that the scenes were shot over several years. Clearly they didn’t bother to validate any of the facts before legally certifying them to be true.
In the back of my mind I’m thinking Bryan & Chaos Men always had a sterling reputation. He got some of the hottest guys in the business because he did everything properly, paid well, etc. Plus, Chaos Men wasn’t the kind of site that you’d expect to have a age problem - it’s a jock site, not a twink or “barely legal” site. I’m guessing since the content is over a decade old Gamma didn’t really care if it was up or down.
At this point I’ll do whatever Gamma tells me to do, but given all the problems with Ceartas’ statements so far, they need to send proof of their claims. They’ve completely lost credibility.
Is it really so much to ask that DMCA companies verify things to be true before sending takedown notices? Sadly this is par for the course with these companies.