In that situation, I believe a contractor could put a lien on the property until they receive their agreed upon compensation.
I've been wondering about my work on Reddit. I've spent countless hours on graphics and CSS, and configuring automod. I have quite a few tiny subs and got a notice to "open up or else" on one of them.
From what I'm hearing, the admins can restore posts, but can they restore all the graphics and coding? And wouldn't that belong to the creator? Would a lien or some kind of copyright exist for all of that?
#RedditMigration
This may vary by state, and I have no idea how it works in other countries, but in some states, you can't sign away rights with a TOS, or something similar.
Something like that could be signed and it would not hold up in court because state law supercedes a contract that contradicts that.