Website hosting problem.

[Sir-Doris]

Right. A bit of a strange dilemma here and I thought maybe one of you technically minded folk could help me out a bit.

A relative of mine had a website designed and hosted by a company in India in 2006. I presume he got the Indian company to design/host it due to monetary constraints.

Anyway, the company that designed the site has used one copyrighted image in a flash animation on the site. Recently my relative got a letter from the owner of the copyright threatening legal action. As a result he tried making contact with the company in India to get them to change the image.

Here lies the problem. The company is refusing to answer emails and telephone calls. I asked if he had been given the FTP details for the site as with the login details I could remove the flash animation in its entirety. He forwarded me the login details as provided to him by the company when the site first went online and typically they dont work.

So... What I want to know is if there is a way to either reset the password or somehow block the image??? Both of which are unlikely since we cant make contact with the hosting company

Or

Would anyone have any idea of where he stands legally?

Or

Maybe I am doing something wrong as its been years since I tried connecting to an FTP server and I have no idea about any of the current protocols but I would assume that everything a person needs to know to login would be on the original email.

Many thanks and anyone who can help will go straight to the top of my christmas list.

[Alchamist]

The legality is a difficult one, as it depends on who owns the data, which would have been a contractual thing when he placed the order with the company. It also depends on which country the person who holds the copyright is in, as to how enforceable it is ... more likely it will fall under DMCA ... but that's a whole other headache!

First things first - If you can't get to the site, then you can't change/amend/block/do anything. You could try contacting the ISP that hosts the web company's links and see if they will pull it, or see who controls the DNS and see if that can be changed ... obviously if it's the same company then that's a no go as well.

If the domain name is registered to your relative, you could see if you can move the domain over to an ISP that you control. If not, there is little more you can do.

If the company is refusing to answer e-mails etc - then the copyright holder should be informed, and pass the duty of care onto the hosting company.

If you want, shoot me the FTP details and i'll have a looksee what's going on, but I don't think you're going to have much luck ... sorry to be the bearer of bad news and all ...

[Sir-Doris]

All sorted now, I was able to access the hosting control panel and discovered the ftp IP address was different to the one supplied.

Entered the new IP address into cuteftp and all is now well and the image has been removed.

Thanks for the info and advice jay