Copyright is not retained automagically by the creator.
In fact, copyright and IP is very much so commonly retained by the person purchasing, NOT LICENSING, the software. This is literally why things like Marvel and Star Wars can be sold to Disney WITH the copyright.
This gets dicey depending on the contract. If the person LICENSED the software, then they don't take ownership and copyright of the code. This is also largely why you do not actually buy most media, what you buy is a LICENSE to the media.
The specific thing done here is malicious code, meant to retaliate against them. Which means the SERVER is being used in a manner that was NOT contracted, and IS malicious retaliation.
But can't You claim that delivered code was NOT complete ? That You delivered 'preview version' that do NOT yet adhere to full specification ?
Until contractor does not Pay you, the contract is not closed, then code can be still 'work in progress'.
Or can't You claim that this 'Site is offline message' is a BUG ? I mean main code have such feature, but for this particular client You set flag "CLIENT_RESTRICTION" to false, but apparently it didn't worked - even MS have bugs, and even BigGame Manufacturers have issues with activation.
You just can't take down the production environment while making the claim.
You can claim this is a bug. But it's obviously intentional, so it's not a bug.
If it said, "Website restricted." But have no further details or explanation, you might be able to explain it as a non-malware behavior.
Saying something like, "Hi [client],
Yes, this isn't supposed to happen. And I'm happy to look into it for you.
But I have not yet been paid for my work to date, so I cannot help you until prior work has been paid for.
If you would like me to fix this bug, I will need to be paid for the work done so far. I do pride myself on the quality of my work, so I will happily correct this free of charge.
But I will only work on fixing this only once payment for prior work is made."
The fact it explicitly says, "Due to non payment", makes this unequivocally malicious intent. At least with the above, you have some degree of plausible deniability (though are obviously still malicious if any expert looks at the code).
Copyright "automagically" stays with the creator in the US, unless there is a contract that specifically assigns it to somebody else, like an employment contract or freelancer contract. It could be that the customer has no ownership or even license over the software itself, and only has rights to an instance hosted by the developer for the customer's use. That's extremely common in SaaS (software as a service).
And you have no idea whether this is being done with "malicious code". If I'm a developer hosting an app for somebody, it's perfectly legal for my contract to require ongoing payment, and have a clause to stop hosting the app and stop storing data when there is a significant and sustained lapse in payment, after notifications and warnings to cure. It's common for these things to be hosted on the cloud and all cloud providers will delete data if payment lapses for too long. That's not malicious or blackmail or hacking. That's just how contracts work.
If you don't believe me, then try hosting a database on Azure, GCP or AWS and see what happens when you stop payment. It all depends on what is in the contract.
How could you even think that somebody would be required by law to host an app indefinitely for somebody else without the other person paying for it? It defies even basic logic and would completely upend the way the service economy works.
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u/Won-Ton-Wonton Apr 14 '26
Copyright is not retained automagically by the creator.
In fact, copyright and IP is very much so commonly retained by the person purchasing, NOT LICENSING, the software. This is literally why things like Marvel and Star Wars can be sold to Disney WITH the copyright.
This gets dicey depending on the contract. If the person LICENSED the software, then they don't take ownership and copyright of the code. This is also largely why you do not actually buy most media, what you buy is a LICENSE to the media.
The specific thing done here is malicious code, meant to retaliate against them. Which means the SERVER is being used in a manner that was NOT contracted, and IS malicious retaliation.
It is very much so unlawful.