little hope of recovering their Web sites

["Hamaker, Chuck" <cahamake@email.uncc.edu>]

Little hope for Talk City users
By Troy Wolverton  <mailto:troyw@cnet.com>
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
August 22, 2002, 1:08 PM PT
 http://news.com.com/2100-1017-954925.html
 
Talk City users have little hope of recovering their Web sites from the
defunct Web hosting company, the trust of the company's bankruptcy case
said this week.

Talk City, which at one point hosted some 2.5 million free Web pages on
its site, including pages for users of corporate clients such as
Microsoft's MSN, shuttered its site earlier this month and ceased
operations. The shut down surprised and upset </2100-1017-950060.html>
many of Talk City's customers, who used the site for its free Web-page
hosting or discussion groups. Many were frustrated that they were unable
to back up their Web pages because the company didn't warn them beforehand
of its impending closure.

Talk City customers are only the latest Net users to lose their data as a
result of a site shutdown. Customers of Internet access company
Excite@Home and online photo site PhotoPoint also lost e-mail or
photographs when those companies closed shop earlier this year.

"You (would) have rights if they gave your content to someone else because
of copyright law," said Neil Smith, an intellectual-property lawyer with
Howard Rice Nemerovski Canady Falk & Rabkin in San Francisco. "But if it
just disappears, the legal system does not provide a mechanism for
preservation or recovery."