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Control of domain account

A question of legality: We have several clients that we have done web design work for. We use a vendor to post the design work to their site. Through our vendor we also host these sites and he has control on the domain accounts. Two of these clients owe us for the design work that has been done. They pay the hosting fee on time. Can we legally withhold "control" of the domain account until they have paid us in full? Can we legally shut down the site for non-payment on the design? Any suggestions?

Rey Scott
Kich & Company

A good question for your lawyers.

Dave Braford
Hanon McKendry

I'm not familiar enough with this, but I would suggest consulting your attorney. It seems too sticky of a situation without legal counsel.

Belinda M. Wilson
Director of Finance/Operations
Fitting Group

First, I am not a lawyer, you might want to ask one also. If I read this correctly, you still have control of the Domain Name at Verisign or wherever. If that is the case, easy solution, though it will really upset the customer. Go to the management site for Verisign (or wherever you regged it at) and change the 'Name Server' section. Point the name servers to some fictitious server, like dns.foo.com, or 127.0.0.1 This will very quickly and effectively render the website useless, 48 hours max. So when a person types in www.clientsdomain.com since you broke the name servers it will come back as not found. Evil but effective, the MIS way! But if you acted as an 'Agency' on behalf of this customer you might want to clear it with a real lawyer. But if you bought and regged the domain name as far as ICANN is concerned you own the domain name.

Jim Kennedy
Brokaw Inc.

You are the owner of the artwork/design/concept until full payment is made. Period. Legally, you must prove you are the owner of the copyright - which requires some filing and paperwork to establish that as a matter of record. But you can use all the words to inform them of your rights if payment is not made. (I found the BEST site for multimedia copyright information called "WWW Multimedia Law".) We had an issue with a client wanting control of their website before full payment was made. (Although we had agreed to a payment plan prior - we had a "falling out", and they wanted full access to design before they finished paying). To protect us, I had them sign an agreement using this language:

"If **client name here** does not pay the full amount of each monthly payment on or before the date it is due, **client name here** acknowledges it will be in default. A default status constitutes a breach of contract and **client name here** understands it will be subject to copyright infringement adjudication. A copyright owner can recover actual damages from infringer. The federal district courts have the power to issue injunction (orders) to prevent or restrain copyright infringement and to order the impoundment and destruction of infringing copies.

# *Your name here** will have the right to receive all costs and expenses incurred in enforcing this agreement."

They paid in full in short time - as their livelihood resided in their website.

Roxanne Cowan
Rutherford Bolen Group Integrated Marketing

We also design and program websites for our clients. We register domain names as well. We do the work ourselves, using outside vendors only for hosting or shopping cart programming. In the past, we also have had problems getting clients to pay for the design and/or hosting. After 90 days, we give a 48 hour notice and if payment is not made, we take the site down until it is made. It makes the client angry but it's very effective. We have never had a client question the legality of this action. Usually their question is only "if we pay how quickly can you get the site back up?" - the exact response we're looking for.

Cheryl Brunner
Media Coordinator/Office Manager
Crowl Montgomery & Clark, Inc.