I agree, if only because the UK seems to be the florida of goofball defamation cases. And while I do think the developer would win their case, having to field one at all really sucks.
In the UK, this is less of a problem, though it depends a lot on the contract between the company and the developer. Assuming nothing exotic, that the statement on the site is true (and not a malicious falsehood) and that if the hosting belongs to the end customer they did not revoke the developer's access (i.e. no unauthorised access occurred), then the developer is in a reasonable position legally. IANAL, of course.
No unauthorized access but they would argue unauthorized vandalism by the developer, which blocks the entire site.
Airing dirty laundry is in some jurisdictions a legal offence. Which is exactly why there needs to be agreement spelled out in contracts upfront, that this could happen, and the client would just sign it.
And I am a fan of smart contracts and cryptocurrencies, see my suggestion below:
When you don’t pay for your salesforce Licence it disables your integrations, and puts up a banner saying this has been done for non payment so you should contact an administrator.
Far be it from me to hold them up as a beacon of moral value, but in business it’s fair to say you have to pay for service.
Not the same thing. Salesforce is a service provider, they can stop the service they provide. This developer could too. Salesforce should not be allowed to cite payment reasons though.
You're opening yourself to claims of defamation, tortious interference, disparagement, even coercion, depending on where you are. Not saying the client will win, but they can make it so you'll need to pay lots of legal fees to defend yourself.
It's much smarter to just take the site down without any kind of message, or just something that says "temporarily unavailable". Play dumb with the client, say you don't know why it went down but to fix it but you need to be paid first. Or say it depended on cloud credits that were going to come out of payment, if you don't want it to look like the site went down due to your incompetence.
Making a big public stink might feel good, but it's not a smart business strategy.
Maybe. A lot of freelancers and agencies have amateur or no contracts.
A neutral service suspended message or no response from the server is more defendable if the client goes after you. If you actively communicate on their website, it could be argued you tried to cause reputational harm etc.
Even if you're right, provoking a legal response from a client is more than a lot of creatives and developers can handle, especially if the client is big enough to retain legal or staff a GC.
I suspect that things will turn out fine for this particular developer since the client seems small and the message is mostly innocuous.
But this is very obviously not "no stuff". This is "different stuff".
Taking the website down entirely or just blanking it out is a very, very different matter than replacing it with a different message; and doubly so when the different message is actively harmful to the customer. Unless the designer's contract with the customer explicitly allowed them to do this, this sort of thing is a slam dunk legal case of either vandalism (using a physical metaphor) or in the UK as in this example, a criminal violation of the Computer Misuse Act.
Not to mention that it's an enormous red flag that will scare away other potential customers for this designer; because it demonstrates that you're very willing to sabotage their operations.
jabroni_salad|1 month ago
petercooper|1 month ago
EGreg|1 month ago
Airing dirty laundry is in some jurisdictions a legal offence. Which is exactly why there needs to be agreement spelled out in contracts upfront, that this could happen, and the client would just sign it.
And I am a fan of smart contracts and cryptocurrencies, see my suggestion below:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46502285
elevatortrim|1 month ago
true_religion|1 month ago
Far be it from me to hold them up as a beacon of moral value, but in business it’s fair to say you have to pay for service.
It’s not a humiliation, it’s just factual.
elevatortrim|1 month ago
crazygringo|1 month ago
You're opening yourself to claims of defamation, tortious interference, disparagement, even coercion, depending on where you are. Not saying the client will win, but they can make it so you'll need to pay lots of legal fees to defend yourself.
It's much smarter to just take the site down without any kind of message, or just something that says "temporarily unavailable". Play dumb with the client, say you don't know why it went down but to fix it but you need to be paid first. Or say it depended on cloud credits that were going to come out of payment, if you don't want it to look like the site went down due to your incompetence.
Making a big public stink might feel good, but it's not a smart business strategy.
SunshineTheCat|1 month ago
My guess is if it was, the client wouldn't agree to it, but who knows (many people just skim over them anyways).
unknown|1 month ago
[deleted]
exe34|1 month ago
like what? contract says "money for stuff". no money, no stuff.
1123581321|1 month ago
A neutral service suspended message or no response from the server is more defendable if the client goes after you. If you actively communicate on their website, it could be argued you tried to cause reputational harm etc.
Even if you're right, provoking a legal response from a client is more than a lot of creatives and developers can handle, especially if the client is big enough to retain legal or staff a GC.
I suspect that things will turn out fine for this particular developer since the client seems small and the message is mostly innocuous.
drysart|1 month ago
Taking the website down entirely or just blanking it out is a very, very different matter than replacing it with a different message; and doubly so when the different message is actively harmful to the customer. Unless the designer's contract with the customer explicitly allowed them to do this, this sort of thing is a slam dunk legal case of either vandalism (using a physical metaphor) or in the UK as in this example, a criminal violation of the Computer Misuse Act.
Not to mention that it's an enormous red flag that will scare away other potential customers for this designer; because it demonstrates that you're very willing to sabotage their operations.
azangru|1 month ago
No stuff is one thing. Different stuff deployed to client's url is quite another.