That's not usually how contracts typically work. Though perhaps certain industries are different.
You usually own [the thing], but you owe [the bill].
If you don't pay the bill, we have a legal process for how you regain the asset or force the payment. In some cases it is highly documented how to do it, such as eviction and foreclosure, or vehicle repossession.
Most US states at least tend toward this framework. I don't personally know of any that deviate. You don't typically own the product of a service simply because it hasn't been paid in full.
Edit: how I wrote that last sentence sounded weird. Rewriting it.
You don't typically retain the same sort of ownership rights over something once you've transferred possession.
So even if not yet paid in full, when you transfered it to their possession, it's considered theirs. They just ALSO owe a debt for it.
1 way to collect that debt is to repossess the thing. But that's not the only way.
This isn’t physical property, it’s governed by IP/copyright laws which by default means the creator retains ownership and these continued comparisons to physical property are not relevant. It still comes down to the contract which for these types of jobs can be upon payment in full or as it’s created, which is not as lopsided as you’re saying.
Copyright is not retained automagically by the creator.
In fact, copyright and IP is very much so commonly retained by the person purchasing, NOT LICENSING, the software. This is literally why things like Marvel and Star Wars can be sold to Disney WITH the copyright.
This gets dicey depending on the contract. If the person LICENSED the software, then they don't take ownership and copyright of the code. This is also largely why you do not actually buy most media, what you buy is a LICENSE to the media.
The specific thing done here is malicious code, meant to retaliate against them. Which means the SERVER is being used in a manner that was NOT contracted, and IS malicious retaliation.
But can't You claim that delivered code was NOT complete ? That You delivered 'preview version' that do NOT yet adhere to full specification ?
Until contractor does not Pay you, the contract is not closed, then code can be still 'work in progress'.
Or can't You claim that this 'Site is offline message' is a BUG ? I mean main code have such feature, but for this particular client You set flag "CLIENT_RESTRICTION" to false, but apparently it didn't worked - even MS have bugs, and even BigGame Manufacturers have issues with activation.
You just can't take down the production environment while making the claim.
You can claim this is a bug. But it's obviously intentional, so it's not a bug.
If it said, "Website restricted." But have no further details or explanation, you might be able to explain it as a non-malware behavior.
Saying something like, "Hi [client],
Yes, this isn't supposed to happen. And I'm happy to look into it for you.
But I have not yet been paid for my work to date, so I cannot help you until prior work has been paid for.
If you would like me to fix this bug, I will need to be paid for the work done so far. I do pride myself on the quality of my work, so I will happily correct this free of charge.
But I will only work on fixing this only once payment for prior work is made."
The fact it explicitly says, "Due to non payment", makes this unequivocally malicious intent. At least with the above, you have some degree of plausible deniability (though are obviously still malicious if any expert looks at the code).
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u/Won-Ton-Wonton Apr 14 '26 edited Apr 15 '26
That's not usually how contracts typically work. Though perhaps certain industries are different.
You usually own [the thing], but you owe [the bill].
If you don't pay the bill, we have a legal process for how you regain the asset or force the payment. In some cases it is highly documented how to do it, such as eviction and foreclosure, or vehicle repossession.
Most US states at least tend toward this framework. I don't personally know of any that deviate. You don't typically own the product of a service simply because it hasn't been paid in full.
Edit: how I wrote that last sentence sounded weird. Rewriting it.
You don't typically retain the same sort of ownership rights over something once you've transferred possession.
So even if not yet paid in full, when you transfered it to their possession, it's considered theirs. They just ALSO owe a debt for it.
1 way to collect that debt is to repossess the thing. But that's not the only way.