Sigh. I feel for web designers who don't get paid, but this is not the appropriate response. It puts you potentially in legal danger and loses you both this customer and anyone they ever talk to.
If you failed to pay a contractor building you a house, they can take a lein against the house or sue you, but it would be quite illegal for them to start tearing the house down. Similarly, unless you have a written contract saying that their website is merely a service you provide, defacing their property is not putting you in a stronger position, morally or legally.
Ok but what if they are providing web hosting as well?
Then the analogy is that your running a shop selling stuff, and then when people come in asking for product x you tell them you won't give them product x because the owners of product x don't pay their bills to you.
It all depends on who owns the hosting. You can't sued for libel if you tell the truth.
If you are providing hosting also, have failed to collect and are writing the debt off, I think it would be MUCH better to disable DNS or the host or something like that, rather than put up a public page like this. I'm a developer, not a lawyer though. If your lawyer tells you it's acceptable to do something like this, then I wish you all the best. Personally, I'd just take the site down and file a lawsuit, even a small claims suit.
No its not ... every business I know ceases to provide you business after a certain number of days of non-payment ... Cable companies turn off your cable, electric companies turn off your light, Your landlord evicts you etc etc.
If you're paying for hosting ... as long as I have your data backed up, I'm pretty sure I can stop hosting your site by removing your dns records from my system
"Recovering your goods" in the sense of a website is to take it offline or restore the original contents. I think filling the page with stuff like this goes beyond recovery.
"Court gives permission" are the key words, though. I don't think they get to deface your walls with giant messages spelling out their side of the dispute, and on their own authority.
BTW, I don't know why everyone assumes the facts are as described on the defaced website. It's not like we've heard the other side of the story. (Personally, I'm unlikely to spend any time to study it in detail, anyway). But if I knew who the web designer was, I'd certainly stay the hell away from him. This was ridiculously unprofessional and inappropriate.
If you failed to pay a contractor building you a house, they can take a lein against the house or sue you, but it would be quite illegal for them to start tearing the house down. Similarly, unless you have a written contract saying that their website is merely a service you provide, defacing their property is not putting you in a stronger position, morally or legally.