Groovy, I hope they don't sue your ass. What you've done is not dissimilar to what the US did to Guantanamo prisoners when they suspended habeas corpus. Sentence without trial. In future I suggest you take your lack of payment up with the relevant authorities rather than demolish the building they paid you to build.
rather than demolish the building they paid you to build
The problem is that they didn't pay for the building. If they had paid for it, he wouldn't have demolished his own building.
Just because you ask someone to do something for you doesn't mean that you have to do it. In this case, someone asked the web developer to build a website. Instead of doing that, he just made a "this person sucks" website instead. A great business move, perhaps not, but legally questionable? Also not.
Even if his contract stipulated that he owned the website due to nonpayment, I seriously doubt that it's legal for him to put up "This company sucks" at that company's domain and with that company's logo. And this is in the UK which has (I believe) notoriously stringent defamation and libel laws.
You know, if you had just written the first sentence, this comment would have been fine. Reading the silly digression about Guantanamo took this from "reasonable point" to "are you serious?"
When I first saw the site I thought great for the developer. When I read the analogy I rethought my position.
I think the analogy is somewhat apt. The legal system is the mechanism for enforcing contracts and bypassing it out of convenience should be frowned upon. Habeous corpus was inconvenient so it was bypassed. I'm opposed to the suspension of habeous corpus and in the interest of consistency I ought to be opposed to what this developer did.
He didn't demolish a "building they paid" for, if they didn't pay. Of course, it lies in the details, and he hasn't provided us with any, so it's hard to judge. It does seem like the wrong approach, but I can understand his sentiments.
Well, it really depends on the contractual stipulations. If the web developer is smart, he will include a clause indicating that he owns all domains, servers, and other electronic assets he creates or administers until payment in full is rendered. Under such conditions, I don't see how the non-paying group can really have a case.
Such stipulations are a good idea because companies are much more likely to pay you and pay you promptly when you take their site offline than when you pursue conventional collection methods (including lawsuits/small claims).
Even so, the developers could have taken the high road and put up a generic "This site is currently offline. Please check back soon." message.
When people don't pay their phone bill, the phone company politely tells callers that "the phone number is no longer in service." They don't have a recording saying "Bill is a loser who can't pay his bills, so we TP-ed his house and called his kids ugly ... oh and you should probably be friends with Jack instead, he's better looking!"
You know you have a problem with how you treat your customers when the phone companies do a better job than you.
no, phone companies are large and can pursue legal action. as much as you want to think of corporations as persons, your analogy does not hold up against a single developer located in thailand.
Fair point. I was not aware the developer was outside of the US. However, I still think their reputation stands to suffer if other potential clients find out that this is their modus operandi when bills go unpaid.
I'm not sure what they could get sued for. Libel? The only statement about UtilityBuilder is that they refused to pay their developer. Breach of contract? This seems more likely, though I haven't ever seen a web development contract, so I don't know what kind of clauses it would have about failure to pay.
well, you can either trust the "relevant" authorities (police, god, ...) - or you can make things happen (entrepreneurs) and ask - if necessary - for forgiveness later.
