Domain hostage (little bit off-topic)

[Fagyal Csongor]

Just an interesting story to share with you.   A client (we programmed his site) of mine hosts his site at host Whatever Inc. in the US. After 6 months of operation, the site disappears. Whatever Inc. claims they don't know the cause, but re-creates the virtual host and other settings. All data lost. My client asks for a restoration of data (mostly user data and user links, as this was a Yahoo style site) from the backups (7 days rotating backup guaranteed by Whatever Inc.) Whatever Inc. says they "forgot to backup the site". My client tries to move his site - well, no site any more, only the domain - to my hosting company. Whatever Inc. denies the transfer, as this legacy domain was registered at NetSol and not with us, they are listed as Administrative contact, so they can do it. They say they will hold back the domain until my client signes an agreement that he will not sue them, and will not ask for a refund of the remaining 18 months of hosting fees which he had paid in advance.   Does the word "ethics" ring a bell? Can you believe all this? Meanwhile, the site is down, my client loses all of his users, the latest backup is 5months old (I have made it "accidentally").   I was wondering what you guys think about this situation.   - Csongor