Virtual Theft

SandraGuest

I'll try and keep it short.

About 5 years ago, my husband was working for a small private computer company and became good friend with the owner. The owner had an ftp site which he let my husband use to put php forums on and upload web pages, as we used it as a gaming site as we had a game server at home. There was never a written contract, it was just a verbal agreement.

The company was sold to the owner's stepdad who also owned his own computer company, and the verbal agreement was basically passed onto the stepdad, who also knew my husband and myself very well.

That company a couple years later was sold to an outside small computer company who as far as we knew, knew about the ftp. Until recently. One of the female workers there decided we were to pay for our use of the ftp site and locked us out without informing us, so when I rang up to ask what had happened we were told we were breaking copyright laws. (If you want the story to that, please post below and I'll explain it, but we were NOT breaking any laws.)

We have two databases on that ftp site, along with a folder full of my images that I created, and my webpages that I created and she is refusing to let us get them back unless we pay for the site. I told her that we did not have any written contracts with the first company, or the second company or the present comapny and she had no right to hold us hostage with our data. I have told her that it is virtual theft with regards her keeping the data.

My husband rang her today and she finally agreed to release the data by allowing us back on the ftp site to retieve our data, but when I tried I was still locked out, even though I had been told that the usename and password had not changed. I went into the offices and said that I couldnt access the ftp site and she called the web manager and asked him if I could access it and he said yes. I come back home - still locked out. I'm getting really sick and tired of being given the runaround here - all I want is the data back - thats all.

Am I in the wrong or is she? I really need help here - can someone help me please?

Thank you in advance.
Sandra

LeeSouthEast

Threaten to get your solicitor involved. That will get you your data back with minimal fuss I suspect. I'd then recommend getting your own server (cheap as chips these days), and then you're safe from this happening again. PM me for a recommendation of where to go for sub-£12/mo.

SandraGuest

To explain the accusation of breaking the copyright law - the game server we were running was called Microsoft Freelancer. Microsoft allow people to create mods to use with the game, as it advertises Lancers Reactor on the Freelancer page. Lancers Reactor advertises Freelancer servers and their mods. A mod is where you add ships, planets, systems, etc to the game but people need to download it first and activate it using a program called mod manager. We had our mod uploaded on the ftp site, and after being polite to an abusive woman as she didnt understand what I was explaining to her, she eventually put me through to the web manager who did understand what I was talking about and I even gave him the links to the Microsoft Freelancer site and to Lancers Reactor.

SandraGuest

LeeSouthEast wrote: »

Threaten to get your solicitor involved. That will get you your data back with minimal fuss I suspect. I'd then recommend getting your own server (cheap as chips these days), and then you're safe from this happening again. PM me for a recommendation of where to go for sub-£12/mo.

After I had rang her to tell her that I still couldnt access the ftp site and asked to speak to whe web manager, she told me he had gone home, so that gave me the impression I was being messed around. She told me to ring him tomorrow, but if I still can't get the data then I will be going to the offices and refusing to budge until the put the data on the USB pen.

I dont know if she will call my bluff on the solicitor, but I will leave that as a last resort. I will find out soon enough tomorrow morning

LeeSouthEast

I suppose it depends how much your data is worth to you. £80 for a solicitors letter may be cheap, or it might be over the top. Decide whether you're prepared to follow it through before making the threat. Most solicitors will give the first 30 minutes consultation free of charge.

mrJ_5

You should always have a backup of your data anyway - what if the server the website currently is on died? You pay nothing, yet it seems that you want someone else to be responsible for a backup, or just have access to the content.

You can't expect to pay nothing forever as overheads need to be paid for, but then they should give you some notice. How much are they trying to charge you?

They shouldn't decide to charge you and back date it either, only if they informed you of the charge previously and a date from which the charge would be valid from. Think of all the people with TalkTalk with free broadband - if they suddenly decided to charge everyone for the past year for their broadband as they just relised they had no money, there would certainly be an issue.

Tallymanjohn

If it was an ftp site then surely you have a 'local' copy on the machine you ftp'd it from?

artbaron

Extortion, not theft. And yes, they have no right to withhold the data from you but possibly they could charge a reasonable admin fee for allowing you access (they could argue that they shut it down in the first place because it was a security issue). Echoing what others say, though, I'm surprised you don't have a local backup. How do you make changes to the code?

Also, not to get at you or anything, but you don't seem to have handled this very well. You didn't confirm with the new owners that the arrangement would be upheld, or check with them what the options were. You just assumed they'd be OK with it, when in reality there's no reason why they should be. In their position, I would also have shut off access without warning, although I would have opened it up for 24 hours to let you take your stuff of when required.