"The devastation of losing my passion, my business and everything is actually too much for me at the moment," said Ryan, who did not have private backups of his site. Ryan, who is now abandoning TVCentral.com.au, has claimed on several web forums including Whirlpool and VentraIP's own message board that VentraIP was responsible for his data loss because it instructed him to cancel his account on the old server before his site had been successfully migrated to the new server. Ryan also said he would proceed with legal action against the company, a claim he has since withdrawn. Several VentraIP staff hit back in the online forums, claiming Ryan's problem was of his own making because he did not follow the company's instructions. The issue devolved into a public slanging match between the two sides, with each side issuing press releases blaming the other for the issue. VentraIP, based in Victoria with over 35,000 web hosting clients, on Friday threatened to sue Ryan for his public comments about VentraIP.

In a letter, seen by this website, VentraIP's CEO Cheyne Jonstone said he was advised that the company could sue Ryan in the Supreme Court of Victoria "for damages to our business reputation and brand name caused by your claims of data loss being directly attributed to negligence on our behalf". "Damages have currently been valued at $150,000 plus costs," he said. As part of the threat Jonstone told Ryan that costs for representation in a Supreme Court case could exceed $30,000 depending on the length of trial, and even if VentraIP's case was unsuccessful, "the maximum amount you can be awarded is 75 per cent, meaning you will be potentially be out of pocket thousands of dollars". The letter said VentraIP was considering its position over the next 48 hours. It gave Ryan until today at 5pm to respond to the company's demands, which include: giving the company consent to release all correspondence between Ryan and VentraIP publicly; that Ryan issue a press release within 72 hours indemnifying VentraIP of all previously made claims; and that Ryan refrain from making any further public comments about VentraIP. "Our insurer has also been notified of these events and will soon take over litigation of this matter, and are fully prepared for any countersuit you may bring irrespective of our decision," Jonstone wrote.

Ryan said if VentraIP sued him he would have to counter-sue them for negligence in causing the data loss, but he was hesitant as he did not have the funds to fight the claim. "I will actually have to fly from Perth to Victoria - it will ruin me," he said. "The website is dead. The site's value now is zero so all they can take from me is personal assets or put me in major debt." He said it was "ironic" that VentraIP threatened to sue him for reputational damage when the company's own representatives had been issuing press releases and commenting about the situation in public forums. Ryan, who had been writing for TVCentral for some time before taking ownership of the site in November last year, said he had hired a new technical administrator just four days before the data loss disaster but "he had not settled in enough to have made any impact on the site before its collapse".

Ryan admits that he was partly at fault in the data loss matter because he did not have a private back up but still believes VentraIP staff were negligent in allowing his site data to be deleted before it had been transferred to the new server. "They will talk about emails that were ignored or back ups not done but the actual cause of the data loss was that I cancelled the account ... why did I cancel the account? Simply because they sent me an email instructing me to," he said. "I had two accounts with them as one account was being migrated to another and they instructed me to cancel the original one. Problem was the site had not migrated to the other as yet so boom all lost." Following questions from this website, VentraIP put out a new press release this morning. Jonstone said Ryan had demanded some money to help pay for an "administrator" to assist with rebuilding his website. "We declined this request, as we stand by our original and unchanged position on the matter, being that Mr Ryan had ignored crucial correspondence and submitted a cancellation request for a service which he did not have a backup of," Jonstone said.

Jonstone said today that since Ryan had announced on the weekend that he was shutting down his website and would not pursue VentraIP further, VentraIP had decided "not to proceed with our application for injunctive relief and damages as we would like to draw a close to this matter".