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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.
... that you should NOT, in any circumstances, trust cops.
The fact is that he did, based on my reading of the statue commit extoration.
The lesson to be learned:
1. Have a contract in place, don't do things on a handshake and a nod.
A contract - and the exercise of building one - isn't just a legal play. A good contract is an agreement on what X will do for Y, and what Y will do in return for X. It is like an API definition.
2. If you have a dispute, don't take it into your hands.
He should have sat down with an attorney and have had them put together a letter of the following form:
"Dear Sir,
The service I have been providing to you per our oral agreement of December XX, XXXX and subsequentally afirmed in various conversations and by you use of the service, is currently costing me $XXX.XX a month to provide due to the traffic level of XXX,XXX visits per month.
To date I have not received payment for this service. Given the current situation, I can no longer continue to provide this service beyond (today+30 days).
If you aren't willing to pay for the service I am providing, will work with to transition to another service provider within these 30 days.
Please note, any assistance in such a transition, doesn't indicate a release of my claims for services provided for XX months at a cost of $x,xxx a month.
Yours,
Joe WebMaster
3. Didn't anyone every teach him "you don't spit into the wind, you don't tug on Superman's cape, and you don't anger the local Sheriff!"?
The Site Goes Down
Pat did not ask for payment of any of that investment, but simply explained to the county he could no longer afford to host and maintain the site for free. For 2 years the sheriff refused to negotiate a way to continue paying for the site.
In January 2004 Pat could no longer afford to host this site out of his own pocket and shut it down.
So, rather than simply transferring it over to the county and telling them to deal with it, he SHUTS IT DOWN and effectively HOLDS IT HOSTAGE? If Pat is *really* not looking for his investment back, he'd simply hand it over to anyone else and be done with it.
Those 'testimonials'. Sheesh! From that page...
To pay for hosting from your own pocket for over 3 years as Mr. Richard has done is an incredibly gracious act.
HOW MUCH does this guy pay for bandwidth? Even at $2.50/gig, he'd have to be pushing terabytes per month. Turn on mod_gzip, for goodness' sake! I certainly don't pretend to know how much traffic they were pushing, but he's either got really bad rates from someone upstream, or he's adding lots of markup to whatever he's claiming in usage.
But even so - if his defenders are saying he's not out for compensation, I say turn the site over to someone else and wash your hands of it, lesson learned. He *is* looking for money back out of this, I bet.
His supporters can't write either...
"You can also view any of our passed updates by clicking the links below."
creation science book
Patrick! Didn't know they had internet access in prison, I thought you only got phone calls! Did you sneak in a laptop or something?
God Bless America. Why? Did it sneeze?
We should let feel that gangster sheriff feel the slashdotting effect!
There you are, staring at me again.