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My preferred method back in my freelance days was to have a few clauses in my standard contract about copyright -- basically laying out that I wasn't doing work-for-hire, and would retain copyright in anything I produced, with an agreement to transfer copyright to the client upon receipt of payment.

That gives a nuclear-option threat of filing a DMCA takedown; telling a client that you can legally have their site turned off within 24 hours is a lovely piece of artillery to have in your back pocket, and since the actions are all taken by their hosting provider there's no possibility of "unauthorized access" charges coming back at you.

This is the most sensible method I've seen. The key point is that ownership does not pass over until payment is made in full.

do I need to pay you royalties when I incorporate those concepts into my own contracts from now on?

Someone always types up this same response to any incident like this, and it always sounds like exactly what I'd expect to hear from the sort of person who stiffs people.

I think this is a common response because it's actually the right choice(s) to make. I mean yes, not getting paid is never fun. There's a video posted in another comment titled "fuck you, pay me" and I think it really addresses this for freelancers. The short version of the video is have a lawyer and write a contract and if they don't pay then enforce the contract. Just my thoughts.

For all we know this action may have been part of the contract and the client simply failed to read it, or didn't believe it would happen.

Highly unlikely.

Yes, I agree it is possible this was part of a contract. I don't know the details of the two parties arrangement so I can't say with any certainty.

Might not have been able to get one if he's dealing with a horse and cart company. :/

What?

If you hand over the keys to a car and tell them that they can start driving it and then pay you when ready, would you post the same response?

Car dealerships don't work that way, you need to sign a contract to use the car - usually web agencies are similar and require full payment or atleast a "payment plan" in place for a website to launch.

> Car dealerships don't work that way,

Quite true. This isn't a car dealership. Doing website support for small businesses in medium and small markets often does work that way. They have a site, they would prefer that things are added to it, instead of a complete replacement. Back when I was doing webapps in this situation, the business would often insist on running the site from their T1 or ISDN line, refusing to spring for hosting someplace where they can't see the physical hardware to reassure themselves that there is something there.

"You want to back up the database for testing? No, just connect to the production database."

"No, you don't have access to webserver config; just build it in a folder." (It turns out that they don't have such access, either, since they "had a disagreement" with the guy who set up the box for them before he left on bad terms. Asking about how to contact this guy is apparently suspicious).

"You want us to sign a contract? We'll look at it." (They never get back to you, since they can find a dozen other people who are grateful for the promise of payment).

"Pay before it launches? Oh, no, we pay net 60, but our site says 'New site coming Oct 1st!', so unless it's up then, there's no reason for us to pay you." (Of course, they put this up without consulting you after you agreed to start prototyping).

And this is to say nothing of the people who insist on detailed designs and specification documents, then say, "Actually, we're going to wait a little while", and then you find your designed system on their site creaking along like it was written by the nephew of the boss's secretary, who totally learned computer science stuff in high school this semester. Surprise! It was written by that guy, except they hired someone else at $15/hr to randomly change things until it worked, since he had to go back to school when spring break ended...

It's not that there are a few businesses that operate like this: this seems to be the majority of small-town businesses who need webapps. When I ran a business doing webapps and web design in the mid-2000s, I'm not sure I ever ran into an end customer who didn't try to pull something I found really shady, though for them it was just the normal way they think they have to deal with vendors so that they can stay in business.

When I gave up and got a salaried job in 2008, my stress evaporated, even though it was a job at a failing startup. :)

I'm sad that you think so. I would never stiff a client or customer (I'm a designer) and have friends who have gone unpaid so I know how distressing this is. I also abhor the idea of not paying people who work for me; I've never done that, and never would, even if unhappy with the work produced. I have stopped working for a client in the past because I found they didn't pay tradesmen working for them, so this is an important principle to me - if someone does work they deserve to be paid for it.

I just think this is absolutely the wrong response. As a freelancer or business your reputation is paramount - that reputation should be for professionalism and courtesy, even when others are not professional with you. This sort of incident teaches us the value of contracts, staged payments, and trust with your clients. If you don't have a good trusting relationship with clients, it's best to end that relationship and find other clients. If a client screws you, I think the best response is to make sure people know what they did, and adjust your process so that future clients can't do that, not abuse your power over their domain/server to post a partisan message like this.

So I'm afraid your assumptions about my motivations are completely unfounded - perhaps you'd like to rethink them and offer me an apology?

I saw no assumption about your motivation, he just found your response the same as that which he would "expect to hear from the sort of person who stiffs people". I happen to agree with him.

Noting this does not require thinking you are one of those people. There is an explanation that is at least equally plausible: You, like so many others, have been inculcated with contradictory views by a society which gives power freely to the dishonest, while purporting to value honesty, but in a form designed to further empower the dishonest.

If it doesn't apply to me, it's a meaningless response and a non-sequitur. I think it rather more likely it did and the insinuation (which you have extended with your own charming and baseless insinuation) was based on untested assumptions which could not be more wrong.

"Noting this does not require thinking you are one of those people."

Noting this does not require thinking that you are one of these people, in the context of strict logical inference.

Noting this is absolutely an (oblique) accusation in the context of a conversation in English.

Pragmatics is an interesting field.

>perhaps you'd like to rethink them and offer me an apology?

I'd definitely like to offer you the advice to never indulge in this sort of passive-aggression, it's very unprofessional and should make anyone think twice about working with you.

Without respect (since you aren't big enough to apologise for your entirely incorrect slander, even when anonymous), I disagree.

The reason someone always types up this response is because it's correct. This is not a good move for your freelancing career, however fun it might be to do, and no serious professional will ever do it. If you want to communicate unprofessionalism, fine, but there are a lot of good and experienced people on this forum trying to teach their business skills, and this one is pretty clear cut.

This depends on the value of repeat business. Here that value is really really small, both with this customer and potentially similar customers who might or might not hear about the incident. Also the web designer is a small player in a big pond, reducing further the risk to his reputation.

The customer - before the retaliation - believed the risk of non-payment to be worth it. Often in small contract work, the contractor can't profitably sue or they believe it's not worth the harassment.

Unless the customer can now sue the web designer for additional damages, this might be strategically the best thing he could do.

I'm with you but I think there are exceptions. To be clear, I don't think its ever okay to publicly shame a non-paying client like in this post but there are some things that are okay. A specific example is a situation I'm in right now.

Over six months ago I was asked to design and develop a Wordpress site for a slate of candidates running for local office. The guy who came to me for it was someone I had worked for before and had a very good experience with. He was fast, friendly, professional, and asked me to send him an invoice before I even planned to. So when he came to me this time asking me to put together a site that he needed up in less than a week I told him the price and got right to work. We had an agreement in writing only so far as emails went and I even spent my own money to let him use my hosting, get an SSL certificate so he could accept online donations and even gave him a few bucks just to test the donation functionality. He was happy with it and again asked for an invoice before I had one drawn up to send. They lost the election but I still did the work.

Fast forward over six months, 5 invoices, and a phone call later and I still haven't seen a single penny. To get his attention I changed the passwords to his other website (the one he actually cares about). That got him calling right away. I didn't let him know I changed the password and let him think it was a technical bug. He pretended not to know why I was never paid and promised to send payment immediately. One month and 3 emails later he promises to send the money "this week" and that he's in a "cah crunch".

Will I publicly shame him? No. I plan to ask for payment once more and give him a $250 discount if he uses the online payment form I set up for him. If he doesn't do it within a week I'll let him know he was one more week to pay me in full before I lock him out of his business email and suspend his web hosting both of which I provide.

You can always try to make the argument that designers need to be more careful in their dealings but you can't forget that there's always a human element, at least on some level, in all business transactions. Sometimes you trust a guy because you've built a good relationship with him and he fucks you over. I've never been stuffed once in three years though some have tried because I always used solid contracts and other safeguards against being ripped off. But sometimes, just sometimes, someone slips through the cracks and in those cases you have to have some recourse available to you.

Even in the absence of a written contract, you absolutely have recourse.

The client essentially has two options at this point:

1. Admit that there was, in fact, a contract in oral form. In this case, they are required to pay.

2. Say that there was no contract of any kind. In this case, they cannot use your work, because you retain the rights to it. Copyright starts out with the creator, and in the absence of a contract that assigns copyright, it stays there. Mentioning that statutory damages for willful copyright infringement can be $150,000 will get people to rapidly change their mind about whether they really want to claim that there is no contract. And of course there's always the option of a DMCA takedown notice to their hosting provider, which is quick and easy.

They're only required to pay if the contract was fulfilled. Usually in cases like this there is a dispute over that.

If the contract was not fulfilled then they are in case #2 and have not obtained rights to the designer's work.