Of course there is, I don't do website design or development for the public anymore due to years of dealing with problems like this, so I understand. It's not very professional however, and makes himself look bad. Just disable the site and remove everything you've done if you want the business owner to answer your phone calls.
Somewhat off-topic, but is the term "hiring" generally associated with payment?
I've run across some (otherwise very reasonable) gaming websites that periodically post big "we're hiring!" notices...and in the small print you see that there's no actual salary, employment agreement, etc. Really they're asking for volunteers, but they very consistently say they're "hiring."
[When I ask what's up with that, they're kinda defensive, saying "well, it's a video-game website, so you sometimes get free game copies....", but.... I dunno, it all seems kinda dodgy to me.]
Yes. To hire is "to employ for wages" according to Apple's Dictionary app. Or if you take the British meaning (mostly the same as the American meaning of the word "rent") to obtain use for payment.
Debt collection laws make it illegal to inform anyone about a third party's debt (except their attorney, creditor, a credit reporting agency, and their spouse). It's not libel, but publicly posting someone's debts is still illegal.
Well apparently their "Two highly gifted programmers" had a hard time making a link in the footer point to their actual website so in case you're wondering whose behind this here is the site of the "webmaster"
Obviously not the smartest move this guy could have made. As someone who has been pretty brash with collection practices in the past with customers who refused to pay I do not mind saying this was plain dumb, the guy clearly could use some lessons in running a business the right way
This looks like a father and son operation in Chicago.
You got many Mom and Pop operations like that who have technical skills but don't have a lick of business sense or business experience. It is ironically the main reason why so many Dotcom startups and Dotcom companies fail.
I figure they were in a hurry to add that link and so they rushed the job and botched the link back to their web site. Then maybe they were locked out of editing the web site because someone changed the password to the account they were using. I figure someone will erase their notice and nobody will know the difference. The only evidence will be this HN thread about it.
But seriously they need a lawyer to review their contract and find a way to collect on the money. Unless the client is filing bankruptcy (there is a cycle to it where a debtor can collect and cannot collect in the process of a bankruptcy but it is so complex only a lawyer can figure it out). Writing about it in public may even violate the contract in the first place if not some laws as well.
The two sons are 18 and 23 respectively. The older one, Alex, owns the DNS record, so I'm guessing they have full access to the servers and all, and I'm guessing it's the 23 in him that posted this (I wouldn't expect this from someone more polished). The domain for the channelsource.BIZ site, however, is owned by someone else (still in Champage, IL) and is also hosted elsewhere. So it could be that AlexLucasTech is responsible for only the .ORG site. It does seem that they control it.
I would argue that even though they control the site that it may contravene at least a few laws, whether it's defacing a website - which they effectively did - or some kind of defamation - not because they are owed money per se, but they're clearly stating that if the company hires you then the company won't pay you, which is speculation at best.
Don't hand over rights to use the work until they've paid. Assign copyright, don't do work for hire. etc. Have cancellation clauses that detail EXACTLY how the end of the relationship works. Get large amounts of the total payment in intermediary payments.
As much as I hate abusive, powerful people and love it when they get their comeuppance, I have deep reservations about retaliatory acts like this. First and foremost is that it's simply too easy to abuse.
But I understand. Our justice system is priced out of reach for most people. (Although small claims court might be a good option for these guys, if the amount owed is small.)
I think that one possible solution would be to simply improve the quality, quantity, and fidelity of the complaint. Scan documents and post them. Take video of yourself talking about the problem, and post them too. This is certainly no substitute for a courtroom, and it doesn't avoid clearly fraudulent claims of abuse, but at least it gives the reading public enough information to make an informed decision.
Simply stating on a website that someone screwed you just doesn't cut it anymore.
Small claims has really low limits, here in NC it's $5000 dollars, and according to the text they're 8 months behind. Which would be a /really/ low rate to fit in small claims.
edit: Texas has higher limits at $10000. I still think it's likely that their owed debts exceed 10k.
"If you would like to learn more about CHANNEL SOURCE, please visit our main website, www.channelsource.biz. This .org website is a companion website dedicated exclusively to team interactions."
About as creative use of the web as you'd expect from a "webmaster". I bet this guy (http://www.phildub.com/) could have come up with something better.
Well this happens all too often in the industry, not paying people what they are owed.
I have a brother-in-law who does work in California for 911 CAD systems as a federal contractor and his business is subcontracted out by a contractor that can't do the work but won the bid. Often he tells me this other company won't pay him, and then he cannot pay his employees and has to find the owner and ask him to write the check. Sometimes the owner writes the check but does not sign it, and he has to go back and get him to sign it. He says this thing happens all too often with contracts.
Now accountants and web administrators also are hired on contracts and sometimes they don't get paid either. In this case the web administrator had access to their web site and inserted that notice.
There was someone I knew called Michael David Crawford who was a software contractor and he would do programming gigs for designing firmware and other advanced programming. He wrote on a series of web sites about the places that didn't pay him like Manpower, Drobo and others, even posting email from managers to blogs and his web sites as proof. One manager and lawyer he posted about at Drobo had the diary/blog he wrote at Kuro5hin taken down with a cease and desist letter. He had posted a series of emails from them to prove what he was trying to say, and they censored him and threated to sue him over it. Sadly Michael went through a tough time, his wife divorced him, he couldn't find any contract work, could not collect on money owed to him on contracts for work he did, he started to go mad. He protested by disrupting Dotcom events at the Hacker Dojo and in Portland:
I don't know why he did those things, he considers himself a hacktivist, and he has startup experience and even worked as a software consultant for Apple and a few other big names as well in his career. (Mac System 7.5.X he worked on, he said his name is in an easter egg in some of the versions)
I mean Michael was on CNN talking about the tax problem software consultants face, and about the Joe Stack incident: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhLV7jydPJ8 of course CNN buried the interview and Rick Sanchez was no longer at CNN, but someone captured it for Youtube. He spoke out against using violence or threats of violence during that interview. He mentioned that he would often get stiffed by the client in that interview. But after that he was marked by authorities and wasn't paid for his works and virtually blacklisted for speaking out. He even had his worked cited by startups http://www.bearcave.com/misl/misl_tech/venture_capital.html
From what I know he has been homeless and in and out of jail and a mental hospital. I lost contact with him before he did those things or accused of doing those things.
You can tell he is a totally different person in the CNN interview, and sometime after that he was not paid for his contracts and they were terminated short-term, and then all these bad things happened to him, and before I know it he is protesting Startup events, and the like. I think he couldn't afford his medication because he was homeless and without work. He often said as a software contractor they would go without work and being stiffed by clients, but still owe the money to the IRS because it is income even if he isn't paid for it.
After he lost his contracts and couldn't collect on money owed him that he was stiffed on, his web sites got taken down, and then auctioned off, and they had the only evidence on them that could have cleared him and proven his mistreatment. I think some domain squatters got them because they were at the top of certain Google searches and they bought the domains for high traffic advertising.
The mystery is this isn't the first time he's been in that jail, he was in before and no charges listed, and 90 days later he was released, only to be rearrested over and over again and released, and then finally they got some charge of threatening with intent to terrorize or something. I have no idea why. I think it is a BS charge like they did with Aaron Swartz and others, but I am not 100% sure on that.
I thought I would cite his case as it is relevant to the topic as a worse case scenario that happens when one isn't paid for their contracted work.
I knew Michael in college, and his problems were quite evident to those around him, even then. At the same time you just knew in your bones that he was a good person (better than most of of the people around him), and in possession of a keen and fierce intellect, besides.
It's such a waste of resources to keep someone like that locked up. He's a good man. He needs help and he needs love (and perhaps also medication). But he doesn't need to be in jail, and he doesn't need to have his name dragged through the public records like that.
Basically I think this is some sort of screwjob being done on him. I too know that deep down he is a good person, he is just going through a bad time in his life.
I am glad I could inform you on his situation, maybe you can order him something in jail? I ordered a snack pack that contained Atomic Fireballs in them because that is one of his favorites.
Yes he shouldn't be in jail, he should be in a mental hospital and be given his medicine he was denied and be treated for his mental illness so he can recover.
I always assumed the term referred to non-technical or semi-technical people who do things like content authoring/proofreeding for company websites and blogs using a CMS and perhaps do basic SEO.
The webmaster/admin whom Channel Source apparently owes money added the "we probably won't pay you" message, presumably to encourage them to make good on their outstanding debts.
It appears that his webmaster has updated the website since the owner refuses to pay his bills, and has gone ahead and added in the whole "We won't pay you" part of it" as an "incentive" to pay.
The .biz site is cookie cutter bullshit full of buzzwords I wouldn't want to pay for it either but I applaud these guys screwing over their stingy boss anyways. Every web designer I've met has plenty of stories of not being paid or being asked to build a megasite for an insultingly low figure by cheapskate startups
Like posting pictures of Goatse and Lemon Party on the main page of their client's web site. It would drive away potential customers and ruin their reputation.
If you asked someone to build a three page "We're Hiring" site and got this, you'd "probably tell them no thanks and stop returning their emails". Why?
Their main .biz site looks fine to my eyes too, like thousands of other business websites settled on functional and simple - I'm sure all of this was built closely to spec. What am I missing here?
You still have to pay even if the end result is not what you envisioned. You pay a contractor for service, it's not a product purchase. Act professionally and he'll certainly try to make up for it. Being a douche doesn't help anyone.
The work may not be good but if you commission someone to create something for you under the pretence of providing payment for their time and services (any amount of money) and then decide you didn't like the work they produced, they'd still want payment (partial or full). Otherwise it's just similar to spec work
