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.

Comments

Re:Thankyou sir

[dasmegabyte]

You get results if you search on "xfree 86", "x free 86" or "xwindows." If they were REALLY blocking the term "xfree86" (and WHY the fuck would they block THAT when they don't block any other term, like "apache," "linux," or "macintosh"), you'd think they'd block these alternate terms as well.

In fact, "XFree 86" lists xfree86.org as the first link. If they are blocking something, they're sure doing a shitty job of it.

It's more likely that MS instituted a crappy "porn check" into their webcrawler that isn't indexing the term "xfree86" properly in the first place. So it's likely they're not BLOCKING anything. If you don't have the data, there's nothing to block and therefore the problem wouldn't be malice, but stupidity...remember that bromide?

The /. difference

[BiggerIsBetter]

The difference between Slashdot and most other "news" outlets is that at least here there can be some dissent, rebuttal, and opinion. Most news sites publish sensationalist crap without any way for differing opinion to be published. Heck, so many stories get submitted to Slashdot where the folks here tear it to pieces, but the original publisher lets it stand as-is.

The funny thing is that when approached about adding article forums, most cite legal liability as a problem - they see themselves publishing submitter's letters rather than the submitter being the "publisher", eg they own the comments rather then you? I guess.