Establish ownership and IP of website content

[MielieSpoor]

A sport society want to get someone to develop a website for them. They have done this previously, but when the society picked up an issue with the people that ran the website for them, the third party doing the website took all the content along with them - this includes many years worth of photos etc.

To prevent this, I suggested they include a clause in the contract this time to stipulate that the content hosted on the site is owned by the society and should be handed over to the society upon termination of the contract - irrespective of the reason for termination.

The problem is, I'm no lawyer so I don't really know what should be included and what can be excluded. Obviously my advise to them is to take the contract to a lawyer to make sure everything that is stipulated in the correct is done so in the fashion and wording, and that the society's rights and privileges are protected.

With POPI coming into play, I believe that the contract should also make provisions for the POPI act and what is required from that act.

Does anybody have any pointers or information that I can read up on that I can give them to help them with the finer detail of this.

From a systems dev perspective, and from my studies many years ago, I know this should happen, but I can't remember all the ins and outs. And as stated, I'm now lawyer, so I'm coming up a bit short.

 

[tridev]

You should have a backup process in place for all the photos

 

[CorrieV2.0]

It all depends on who bought the domain. I'm sure that if you bought it trough them you would still be the owner of the domain. It is rather poor for any person/institution who acted as webmaster to deny the owners of the site access to their own site (Just because they want a new webmaster). This is really not standard procedure

You could probably get a cease and desist from a court but that would probably be costly and you would have to weigh up the legal fees with how much it would cost to just develop something new. Basic Web Development would probably cost less than legal action. That being said a third party cannot operate a website with your business name, the business would definitely have grounds to stop that.

You probably should go see an IP lawyer

 

[naeem]

what was the issue that the society picked up with the web devs? I suspect there is more to it.

 

[rward]

A sport society want to get someone to develop a website for them. They have done this previously, but when the society picked up an issue with the people that ran the website for them, the third party doing the website took all the content along with them - this includes many years worth of photos etc.

Sounds like the sports society didn't ahve things in writing correctly and the people developing and hosting the site spent time doing development and hosting. When they asked for compensation for the development and hosting I bet the society didn't want to pay.

Or maybe they were on the "I have a great idea and if you develope it for me I'll give you 50%" bandwagon.

As naeem says - there's more to this.

 

[MielieSpoor]

Oh my! No, there is actually nothing more to it. The society wanted to terminate the services and the people doing the site wasn't in agreement with the termination and refused to hand over the data.

Anyway, I have contacted a lawyer to get the contracts in order.

The speculation in this thread is amazing, while all just skipped over answering the actual question.

 

[flippakitten]

Oh my! No, there is actually nothing more to it. The society wanted to terminate the services and the people doing the site wasn't in agreement with the termination and refused to hand over the data.

Anyway, I have contacted a lawyer to get the contracts in order.

The speculation in this thread is amazing, while all just skipped over answering the actual question.

I had the same speculation because that's normally what happens.

Anyway, host all images on somewhere like AWS and only provide the api info.
That way hosting/dev company have no access to actual servers

Or go as far as separating dev and hosting are completely. Like use Heroku and AWS.

 

[rward]

Apologies for the speculation but that generally is the way that it does go. Usually money is still owed and the website 'held ransom'.

If it is as you say then those dev's shouldn't be used again, by anyone.

It does suprise me how few website owners don't own their hosting account or even have access to it, instead leaving it in the hands of others. I've never understood why.

To answer your question directly:
A lawyer is going to be a once off expense so it may be worth it, but the tradeoff is how many times are you going to redevelope the site..

Better advice would be to go with a reputable development company and insist that they deploy the site to the hosting you provide.
Very few sites require dedicated servers or anything beyond a shared hetzner account (and equivalent).

This way, you always has control of their site and data. When the devs need to do something on the site they can request the password (which you then change a day later).
If they devide to wipe the site then you can restore it from your providers backups (you did get good hosting, right?)

 

[Thor]

Who is the company that held the website content ransom?

Probably more to this.

 

[rward]

Who is the company that held the website content ransom?

Probably more to this.

Read the thread. Nothing more to it.

 

[Thor]

Read the thread. Nothing more to it.

In that case name and shame.

 

[Randy_The_Squirrel]

took all the content along with them - this includes many years worth of photos etc.

It amazes me how many people still think storing irreplacable things on their website is better than having backup copies?

 

[MielieSpoor]

Apologies for the speculation but that generally is the way that it does go. Usually money is still owed and the website 'held ransom'.

No moneys was owed to anybody. I suspect they still wanted their rugby season tickets that came along with doing the website. The fallout wasn't pretty though.

Better advice would be to go with a reputable development company and insist that they deploy the site to the hosting you provide.
Very few sites require dedicated servers or anything beyond a shared hetzner account (and equivalent).

This way, you always has control of their site and data. When the devs need to do something on the site they can request the password (which you then change a day later).
If they devide to wipe the site then you can restore it from your providers backups (you did get good hosting, right?)

This is what I actually want them to do, but because of petty politics and time, I don't really want to get involved on that level anymore. Money is also an issue for them, thus the reason they got this guy (present dude) to do the website as part of a sponsorship in return for some rugby tickets.

The present guy doing the website, can't event supply me with the website ip so that I can update the dns records for the domain. So yes, this is a massive pain in the a...

It amazes me how many people still think storing irreplacable things on their website is better than having backup copies?

Yes well, that is what you get when people that can't even operate a computer needs to make these decisions, which sadly, is still the case. Also, the initial incident happened circa 2010.