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Compensation for Bandwidth Costs is Extortion?
Tha_Big_Guy23 asks: "According to this article, a man who created a website for his local Sheriff's department is being charged with extortion. This was caused by taking down the website after repeated attempts to get compensation from the county to cover the bandwidth costs. As a result, all his personal computer property, and company computer property was seized and he was jailed."
"After being jailed he was charged with extortion, larceny by conversion, using a computer to commit a crime, and obstruction of justice. This website explains in more detail the circumstances surrounding the situation. Has anyone on Slashdot ever had an experience where a client was unwilling to compensate you for either your work, and/or the resources required to do your work?"
While the end result of this situation is a shame, let this situation serve as a warning for those of you who work, without a contract in place. While it is the general hope that people will behave in an honorable manner, sometimes this is just not the case, and contracts exist to protect both parties, when things go sour.
While the end result of this situation is a shame, let this situation serve as a warning for those of you who work, without a contract in place. While it is the general hope that people will behave in an honorable manner, sometimes this is just not the case, and contracts exist to protect both parties, when things go sour.
The grass is only greener, if you don't take care of your own lawn.
Read TFA, not skim TFA.
According to the second link in the article, he spent $300,000 of his own money and is not asking for his inventment back. He simply tried to tell the county that, going forward, he couldn't afford to pay for it himself. When they ignored him, he closed up shop to keep from losing more money. They retaliated by arresting him and slapping him with exortion and other charges.
Overrated Moderation: This posts sucks... because.
His actions certainly are not reasonable.
They didn't pay, he shut down the site. Explain the part of that you consider "unreasonable", please?
Whether or not you consider the magnitude of his bill to the county as reasonable, it boils down simply to "he provided a service, sent a bill, bill went unpaid, he stopped providing the service". Nothing more than that.
Theft of service also breaks the law. Key difference, a private individual doesn't have the power to abuse to have people from the country government frivolously arrested.
Also, RTFA (in particular, the second link). He did not send them a bill for $300k... He said his total expenses came out to $300k (not unreasonable, if he actually worked something resembling full-time for 2-3 years... That alone gives $200k+ depending on the going rate in his area for a network admin). He didn't even attempt to recover any of his past expenses on the project. He merely requested they start paying for his services, and when they refused, he stopped providing the service.
If this counts as extortion, it sets a VERY dangerous precedent... A precedent that basically makes slavery legal, by making it a crime to stop performing a voluntary service.
On the bright side, assuming he doesn't end up in prison for a few years, he has a fairly good case for harassment, with monetary damages resulting. He could end up getting considerably more than his $300k (which, again, he did not actually try to bill the county for).
One of the others ("MSN Search Blocking Results For XFree86?") didn't really have enough data to prove or disprove (so it's probably not worth the 868 comments it attracted).
What are you talking about? if you either click on the link in the story, or go to msn.com, type "xfree86" in the box at the top, then click on search, you only get 1 result, which is porn and it warns you about.
If you go to any other search engine there is more than one result and it isnt this nightcrawler business. google has 2.4 million.
tellingly if you search on google for xfree86 nightsurf, you only get 28 results, none of which is the website that msn throws up.
SURELY NOT!!!!!
Macomb county is not some podunk area, it is part of metro Detroit