I Wasn't Paid • Hacker News Board

Re: I Wasn't Paid

#101

Post by shabble » Tue, Jan 31, 2012, 6:51 PM UTC

crag wrote: post #53

One dangerous thing that stands out is this "kill switch". VERY bad idea. Now you are liable for damages. The way to handle this is: When you get the judgement against your "client", slap a lean on his properties equal to the amount owed (and throw in your court costs). That inclues his accounts. All you need is an order from the judge. That's it. That's about all you can do really. Is to go after his assets. Also I'…

I wonder if it's legal to state upfront in your contract that 'technical measures' are implemented in your work to prevent theft of service (or whatever you call the use of the work product without payment), and are to be deactivated & removed following completion/final payment?

The software licence-key approach seems somewhat similar, and I've yet to come across legal proceedings "because we didn't pay the guy and our 30-day demo ran out", although I'm sure it could get more complicated for services rather than actual shrinkwrapped products.

On the other hand, you've got the fact that it's laid out in the contract (which is presumed read, rather than just clicked through like a shrinkwrap EULA), and the interesting potential for DMCA/WIPO96'alike anti-circumventation proceedings against clients who refuse to pay and extract the kill-switch code to reactivate.

In that theme, is:

    final_invoice_paid = false;
    if (!final_invoice_paid) { exit() }

a valid "means to descramble a scrambled work, to decrypt an encrypted work, or otherwise to avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate, or impair a technological measure, without the authority of the copyright owner"?

My immediate thought is yes, assuming you're still the copyright holder (and you have a copyright assignment on payment clause in contract), but jurisdictional work-for-hire terms might screw you.

Re: I Wasn't Paid

#102

Post by ohashi » Tue, Jan 31, 2012, 6:53 PM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #97

In general this sort of site gets sued a lot. For the exemplar site see RipOffReport which has almost more lawsuits than posts it seems. So if you run it for any length of time be sure to have a good legal team already in place. The other thing is that there is an endless supply of bad business deals gone wrong so any individual deal that went south may make the person venting feel better (until they are sued) but th…

I worked on a similar project a while back and definitely got legal threats constantly. Not one ever followed through but I grew tired after a couple years of dealing with it.

Re: I Wasn't Paid

#103

Post by jeffreymcmanus » Tue, Jan 31, 2012, 6:55 PM UTC

patio11 wrote: post #65

edw519 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Patrick, I completely agree with you, which is why I have never publicized my difficulties with problem customers. But something in my reptilian brain really still likes this. Let me tell you why... You say "Work with better clients." Working with better clients means avoiding the bad ones. Avoiding the bad ones means being able to identify them. Being able to identify them means being warned. It's almost like seeing…

If you want to perform (for lack of a better word) a mitzvah for the community, rather than picking out a single abusive customer, use your experience and teach people how to pattern match. Memo to young Rails developers: "I have an idea for a website. If you build v1.0 I'll pay you a whole thousand dollars and you might get equity if it works very well." has never had a happy ending. (Slight overstatement there, but…

"Pattern matching" is like astrology for smart people.

Re: I Wasn't Paid

#104

Post by shabble » Tue, Jan 31, 2012, 6:55 PM UTC

gavingmiller wrote: post #28

barefoot wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At what point does it make sense to involve a lawyer? $5,000? $10,000? Isn't it expensive to legally fight for your payment?

Stipulate in your contract that the losing side has to pay the legal fees for the other party. That way getting paid doesn't cost you more.

Granted incredibly unlikely, but doesn't that open the possibility of:

* Rip off developer

* Hire incredibly expensive legal team/legal buddy[1] to find small enough loophole in contract

* Bill developer for cost of legal as well as rip them off

* Profit?

[1] How do jurisdictions that auto-award costs handle contingency claims? Is "£0 if I lose, or £1M/hour if we win" a legitimate billing rate? I can't imagine it could be.

Re: I Wasn't Paid

#105

Post by benohear » Tue, Jan 31, 2012, 6:57 PM UTC

minus1 wrote: post #90

patio11 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to perform (for lack of a better word) a mitzvah for the community, rather than picking out a single abusive customer, use your experience and teach people how to pattern match. Memo to young Rails developers: "I have an idea for a website. If you build v1.0 I'll pay you a whole thousand dollars and you might get equity if it works very well." has never had a happy ending. (Slight overstatement there, but…

Here's my mitzvah: Don't do work for individuals or very small companies. People are much more reasonable when your fee isn't coming out of their pocket.

Doesn't match my experience: I have several small clients who pay within a couple of hours of receiving a bill. However they are profitable small clients (and very nice people).

Re: I Wasn't Paid

#106

Post by benohear » Tue, Jan 31, 2012, 7:00 PM UTC

fleitz wrote: post #92

patio11 wrote: post #57

This is not a way forward. 1). Work with better clients. You can have invoice collection problems at $50k, too, but they're much less likely than at $500 and you have much better options for... escalation methods at that point. 2). If you're not a bank, stop taking on so much credit risk. Businesses can deal with substantially sterner payment terms than you'd think to offer. If your clients balk, see #1. (Thomas has…

Fully agree with you Patrick, I've had some bad experiences with payments that turned out to be blessings in disguise. As one of my mentors said about taking people to court "How much of your time / resources would it take to sue them? How much would you gain? How long would it take you to generate that much rev?" When I realized that it took less time to generate the rev than to sue I decided to drop the matter and…

The way I tend to look at it is "paying for education".

Re: I Wasn't Paid

#107

Post by benohear » Tue, Jan 31, 2012, 7:08 PM UTC

edw519 wrote: post #62

patio11 wrote: post #57

This is not a way forward. 1). Work with better clients. You can have invoice collection problems at $50k, too, but they're much less likely than at $500 and you have much better options for... escalation methods at that point. 2). If you're not a bank, stop taking on so much credit risk. Businesses can deal with substantially sterner payment terms than you'd think to offer. If your clients balk, see #1. (Thomas has…

Patrick, I completely agree with you, which is why I have never publicized my difficulties with problem customers. But something in my reptilian brain really still likes this. Let me tell you why... You say "Work with better clients." Working with better clients means avoiding the bad ones. Avoiding the bad ones means being able to identify them. Being able to identify them means being warned. It's almost like seeing…

Asking for something like 30% up front is a very good way to filter out problematic clients. I regularly don't even bother to collect the up front payment once they've accepted it, but if the client refuses then it's a red flag.

Often it's the client himself who chases me up to make the payment. That's a very good sign.

Re: I Wasn't Paid

#108

Post by daeken » Tue, Jan 31, 2012, 7:13 PM UTC

edw519 wrote: post #69

patio11 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to perform (for lack of a better word) a mitzvah for the community, rather than picking out a single abusive customer, use your experience and teach people how to pattern match. Memo to young Rails developers: "I have an idea for a website. If you build v1.0 I'll pay you a whole thousand dollars and you might get equity if it works very well." has never had a happy ending. (Slight overstatement there, but…

"I have an idea for a website. If you build v1.0 I'll pay you a whole thousand dollars and you might get equity if it works very well." If only all the assholes were so easily self-identifying. The real problems are the charming, smooth talking, dream clients offering cool projects, top dollar, and paying on time...until they don't and decide to start making your life hell because you're in so deep already. They're n…

Agreed. I had a project a couple years ago, just like this. Everything started off fine -- solid contract, good communication, etc. Payment was solid for the first few months, then it stopped. I was accused of putting together templates with no functionality behind them, and they demanded their money back. When I informed them where they could put their demands, so to speak, they threatened litigation. I had done the work and knew the contract was solid, but I couldn't have afforded a lawyer. Thankfully, they soon disappeared... But not before stealing their customers' funds. Ugh.

In retrospect, there were a few warning signs fairly early on, but it's hard to see that when you need the money to eat.

Re: I Wasn't Paid

#109

Post by WettowelReactor » Tue, Jan 31, 2012, 7:16 PM UTC

gk1 wrote: post #42

iamandrus wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your computer probably has malware. Run ComboFix and that should fix the issue. http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/combofix/how-to-use-combofix

I'm on a highly secured military network. While it's not impossible that there's malware on my computer, I think it's more likely that something's up with the website. Edit: There's no choice of browsers on this network. It's IE 7 or nothing.

Any network connected to the general internet (even NIPRnet) is not a highly secured network. Maybe highly regulated but sure as hell not secure.

Re: I Wasn't Paid

#110

Post by pavlov » Tue, Jan 31, 2012, 7:17 PM UTC

jeffreymcmanus wrote: post #103

patio11 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to perform (for lack of a better word) a mitzvah for the community, rather than picking out a single abusive customer, use your experience and teach people how to pattern match. Memo to young Rails developers: "I have an idea for a website. If you build v1.0 I'll pay you a whole thousand dollars and you might get equity if it works very well." has never had a happy ending. (Slight overstatement there, but…

"Pattern matching" is like astrology for smart people.

Maybe you can drop the "for smart people" -- the same kind of magazines that blather about horoscopes tend to run lots of stories along the lines of "How to recognize a narcissist".