Client wants .ai file of labels - but then uses them to make their own.

"So what do you do when your clients ask for the .ai file after they pay you? Do you just send them pdfs? Do you password protect them? I don't my work to be scammed anymore but not sure what to do."

Your situation is actually pretty common, mainly because copyright infringement law is never taught.  You were paid to design and "produce" a print ready file.  You were not paid for the file itself. Period.  Never surrender your work product.

...the designer and client need to be on the same page before the project begins. that's all.

Correct. If you're conducting business, do it in a business like manner. If you want happy customers, you need to make clear up-front what they're buying.

I'm as infuriated by blatant copyright infringement as anyone. (Particularly when I see a supposed fellow creative commit it.)

But a designer also needs to be practical and realistic about the quality and intrinsic value of what he produces. Everyone thinks his own design work is utterly brilliant and everyone else's is trash. But face it; the vast majority of graphic design (as opposed to illustration) is a rehash of something the designer has seen before; a mimicking of whatever is "trendy" at the moment.

One also needs to consider the practical needs of the paying customer.

For the most obvious example, a client needs full usage rights to a properly built identity package (logo and supportive graphic elements) he has paid good money for. And that's key; your work should be priced accordingly, and one of the criteria for that is the extent of usage rights. Again, it needs to be spelled out up-front.

But the same practicality principle often applies to lesser projects, too. Paying customers do business in an increasingly data-driven world (and conventional-wisdom graphics software has a lot of catching up to do in that regard).

I actually love it when a client wants to be able to reprint as-needed without having to come back to me for every little edit. Clients commonly think it's downright silly to have to, and depending on the nature of the project, I quite agree. I've often upsold a client from just a one-off set of designs to a solution which frees him from dependency upon me and empowers him. And that never lost me business; it kept the appreciative client coming back.

Projects like business packages (stationery, envelopes, business cards, etc.), product labels, restaurant menus, certificates, name tags, and more, often need to be delivered in an editable form that can be updated as employees come and go and recipes and prices change. Solutions for such things can be as simple as leveraging the functionality of enabled form fields in the print-ready PDF.

At the other end  of the client-editability scale are full-blown data-driven, network shared solutions. I've designed data-driven solutions for 1000 page product catalogs that are continually updated by non-designer data-entry clerks and that assemble themselves via scripts with no manual "desktop publishing" whatsoever. I've built data-driven marketing solutions to empower a whole dealership network to populate their own localized fliers, placement ads, mailers, and emails on-the-fly, without corrupting the centralized branding, thereby protecting the brand against the cheezy amateurish home-grown stuff that proliferated beforehand (and that you allude to).

So give some thought to intentionally providing editable solutions to your customers who need it. It may surprise you when you see that it keeps them (and their referrals) coming back to you.

JET

I agree with michelew83603738 entirely. Freelancers need contracts to protect themselves. A contract allows you to make sure that there are no misunderstandings about what is expected from both the client and the you, the designer.

Here's a great video about contracts: F*ck you. Pay me. - YouTube

While the title may be a turnoff for some people, the information is great!

you may be right. and it may be possible to track down a client and compel them to pay for the template they used.

but somehow i'm guessing that the costs of doing so would be incredibly prohibitive.. do you really think someone is going to pay thousands or tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees to protect a template for a $500-1000 design job?

if you look back at what i originally said, my main point is that the designer and client need to be on the same page before the project begins. that's all.

I think the correct answer is to talk to the client up front about it. If you don't want them using the artwork you created beyond just printing it, tell them that from the get go.. however, be forewarned. they are going to go to someone else.

my personal opinion is that you did the work to create x number of labels, and you were paid for that work. if they use that file to create more stuff later, you're not doing more work, so i don't think you should have any problem with that.

imagine someone paid you to build them a car. and then they had the audacity to drive that car back and forth to work without paying you per mile... or if someone asked you to design a single flyer, then they went and made a bunch of photocopies..

anyway. just my opinion. like i said, just talk to the client up front so they know what the expectation is.