What can I do?

[mfilion]

I have been doing websites for a few years now. Last year, an organization, headed by my father, was looking for someone to make a website.

I decided to apply for the job. In order to do so, i had to produce a written and oral presentation.

Finally, after the presentation, a few weeks passed and they decided to give me the contract, so I built the site, and within a few months, it was completed.

That was back home in Quebec, Canada. During the months of april, may, june, I was asked to do updates on the website, which I gladly did. I did not receive any more updates demands since then.

Last September, I left for Banff, Alberta. Seeing as the Internet is accessible from everywhere, I new I could continue doing updates on the website, seeing as the contract had not been ended.

Anyway, today, i went for an interview for a website job. I was asked to show some of the websites I did, and I showed that specific one.

Little was I to know that my work had been completely destroyed. The website which I was the most proud of had been completely erased and replaced with another one that has yet to be completed.

Of course, I felt like an idiot, showing a website that wasn't mine.

What can I do about this? Can I sue the organization in question?

Are there any author rights concerning webpages?? Does an organization or company have to tell or ask the author of the website when it wants to completely erase it???

If anyone can help, please, do let me know, seeing as I am extremely upset about this.

Thanks to all who answer.

Mark

 

[Michael Wechsler]

While it is certainly upsetting, if someone painted a portrait for you which you paid for and you hung it in your house, would you think that you were obligated to locate the painter if it was damaged and you decided to throw it out? What if you couldn't locate the painter from his phone number -- should you be obligated to track the painter down? Seems a little absurd, doesn't it?

I'm not sure how one can expect an obligation, which paid a designer for work, to have an obligation to the designer to keep that web site up at will, no modifications. Why couldn't the company modify the site, take it down, or do whatever it wants to do with it the officers want to do with it?

The law is designed to deal with people in the normal course they do business. If you had in mind that the company would be required to keep up a web site you designed for them as your personal portfolio, you need to put that in writing. I can't imagine that this is the ordinary course of business and what you should have done was make a copy for yourself of the pages (e.g., just save the pages in IE) as your portfolio.