browser cache error causing a legal problem!

[cavemanlawyer15]

This is deeply disturbing-- a close friend's career may be going in the tank because of a browser technicality!

This gentleman hired someone to design his company's website, and unknown to him the designer plagiarized another website. The rightful owner found out and called my friend, who of course agreed to change it. He DID change it.

But when the owner went to my friend's completely redone site, he found that the front page had changed, but when clicking on internal links, the same plagiarized content appeared! He was extremely irate at being apparently lied to, and is threatening legal action.

***

I know that browsers have default cache settings that can sometimes load old content when live content is unavailable or loading slowly. Is it possible that's what happened here? The angry person simply failed to clear his cache, creating the misconception?

I'm appealing in good faith to the altruism of this knowledgeable community. ANY insight at all is much appreciated.

Thank you.

[jonc]

Are you able to browse from another machine and the content is all as it should be? The new design?

If so, then its one of 2 possibilities:
1. the original owner's browser cache is holding the original, and it needs to be cleared before going back to the page
OR
2. the original owner is using an ISP which either has a transparent proxy, or he is using a manually assigned HTTP proxy which is not refreshing its cache as it should.

I would recommend your friend speaks to his superiors at work with the proof that he has actioned changes as the situation has required and (if possible) that these changes are clearly visible to regular internet users outside of the company (perhaps a laptop using a 3G connection or dialup modem).

The company can then contact the original owner direct and state that they have done all that has been requested and required.

As long as he has taken all steps necessary to resolve the matter correctly, he should not have a problem. I am pretty sure he cannot be held responsible for externally stored information (i.e. proxy servers or browser caches).

UPDATE: Just had a thought, if I remember right, there is a meta tag which stops proxy servers from caching a page - it is used on many secure sites like banks etc.
There is more details on this here: http://www.htmlgoodies.com/beyond/reference/article.php/3472881

Hope that helps...

Another Update: Welcome to the site by the way :) (I see this is your first post here)

[cavemanlawyer15]

This is excellent, thank you so much.

[MidiMagic]

If the server is a Unix machine, there could be previous versions stored on it. Replacing a file does NOT destroy the original - it gives it an alternate name.