"Because you have failed to pay me for my work, I feel it would be morally justified for me to revert all of my changes unless we reach an agreement in the next 10 days."
That's unlikely to be effective. As soon as they heard that, they'd just make backup copies of all the code and change the passwords on their servers.
"You're not actually saying you're going to do it. You're just saying you think it would be ok."
A statement like that could be considered to be extortion, even if made as a hypothetical. If you owed me money, and I told you "that's a nice car you have, it would be a real shame if anything were to happen to it", you'd take that as a threat, wouldn't you?
You're right, it could be considered extortion. I'll retract that as even an implied recommendation.
In this case, it doesn't seem like they have a contract, so the remedy might be to just "undo" the deal as best they can.
Unfortunately, without a contract, there probably isn't a statutory remedy, and they'd have to go to court. That's why I said s/he definitely should not actually revert the code.
My suggestion also took into account the 1st Amendment, which protects speech that has content. In this case, s/he's saying "this is how I feel about it" and "it would be morally justified", both of which have content beyond any sort of implied threat.
All that said, I'm not a lawyer, and no one should take anything I say as legal advice.
Comments
"Because you have failed to pay me for my work, I feel it would be morally justified for me to revert all of my changes unless we reach an agreement in the next 10 days."
That's unlikely to be effective. As soon as they heard that, they'd just make backup copies of all the code and change the passwords on their servers.
"You're not actually saying you're going to do it. You're just saying you think it would be ok."
A statement like that could be considered to be extortion, even if made as a hypothetical. If you owed me money, and I told you "that's a nice car you have, it would be a real shame if anything were to happen to it", you'd take that as a threat, wouldn't you?
You're right, it could be considered extortion. I'll retract that as even an implied recommendation.
In this case, it doesn't seem like they have a contract, so the remedy might be to just "undo" the deal as best they can.
Unfortunately, without a contract, there probably isn't a statutory remedy, and they'd have to go to court. That's why I said s/he definitely should not actually revert the code.
My suggestion also took into account the 1st Amendment, which protects speech that has content. In this case, s/he's saying "this is how I feel about it" and "it would be morally justified", both of which have content beyond any sort of implied threat.
All that said, I'm not a lawyer, and no one should take anything I say as legal advice.