sharing production materials
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- hulja
i've recently had an issue with a client where we built a flash site for them and, prior to payment, they insisted on obtaining the raw production files we produced.
prior to starting on this project, we wrote up an agreement where in the terms and conditions, it specifically stated we hold the rights to the production materials and that the client does not require them nor will they obtain them.in the end, they agreed to pay extra for the files, but not without a fuss. this client is an ad agency even, so they should have experience in these matters. however, the entire time, they treated this as if we were greedy bastards and that it's 'normal' to deliver your .fla's with your .swf's. All we were doing was protecting our rights and intellectual property.
has anyone else had a similar experience? i've been doing this for over 6 years and have yet to have such an uncomfortable experience with production materials. (i've plenty of uncomfortable ones, but nothing like this)
does anyone else here actually deliver production materials with the product or do they hold the rights to those?
i keep thinking it's like hiring a photographer. you pay for the photos and his service, but not the negative. the second you have the negatives, you can run naked through the streets and scream they are yours.
- paulrand0
we turned our fla's over to an someone we did a site for because we couldn't stand to work with them anymore. I figured if I wasn't willing to update his site, he should still have that ability (athough the files are such a tangled mess I doubt anyone could make sense of them)
- hulja0
yeah. i'm not wanting to work with this client either. it's just that what they want is to hire a cheaper, lower quality studio to continue with the site. it would seem fair to deliver the raw materials to them, but when competition suddenly gets hold of something they can make a few basic modifications to and then call it theirs, that idea just doesn't fly.
the strangest part is that all the terms were stated and endorsed, yet still we seem like the stingy bastards in the end just because we are following our guidlines learned from experience.is there any material out there on this topic? is there anyone else here who will not share their source code with an ad agency client (aka. technically competition, but still hire you for more advanced jobs)?