Web Editing

I have recently been asked by someone to have a look at editing a couple of existing web pages.

Thing is the site was originally designed and created by an online web design company. They were told by the company that they can only go to them for editing, and to date they have been charged large amounts of money to change simple things like Phone Numbers and Mail Address.

Does the company have the rights to do this?

Any information on this one would be grateful.

First off, IANAL (I am not a lawyer!), so don't rely on what I say as legal advice.

I would say that they have the *right* to say that to their client, but the client equally has the *right* to tell them to go to hell and use another designer!

Unless there is something in the agreement they signed with the design company that stipulates that the client must use them for all site updates. Or unless the copyright to the site is somehow owned by the design company, not the client. (Caveat emptor in either of those cases!) In these situations I guess the client would have to renegotiate the agreement with the company. Or take them to court to have the agreement nullified.

A third possibility is that there are no issues with the copyright or the agreement, but the company simply won't supply the client with the means (eg FTP details) to update their own site. In which case the client would probably be wise to grab their site via their web browser, and look elsewhere for a designer.

In fact, if I was the client in any of these situations I would just find another designer and get them to build me a new site! Provided, of course, I owned the domain name, and not the design company. Otherwise I would have to negotiate with the design company to transfer ownership of the domain to me, or else register and use another domain.

Does that help?!

Matt
ELATED : )

--
Matt Doyle, Elated
3rd Edition of my jQuery Mobile book out now! Learn to build mobile web apps. Free sample chapter: http://store.elated.com/

Matt once again, thanks for the sound advice.

I will get them to have a look and mean while have a tinker and tidy of somone elses work.

Every days a school day.

Andrew

No problem. Hope it all works out OK with the client

Matt
ELATED : )

--
Matt Doyle, Elated
3rd Edition of my jQuery Mobile book out now! Learn to build mobile web apps. Free sample chapter: http://store.elated.com/