Client and agency ethics under strain

Suppose you owned and had title to a valuable painting, maybe a work by Piccasso, Rembrandt, Turner or Constable, does that give you ownership of the copyright as well? What if you commissioned a talented artist to make a copy of this painting you owned, would that be OK? If you tried to sell the fake then the police would probably take an interest, so when is it OK to copy somebody else's work you have bought and when is it not right? Whatever the legal interpretation there is a question of ethics. Because you have instructed an agency to design you a brochure, an advertisement or a web site is it ethically right to then re-use or plagarise the design. And do you have a right to the work in progress files that were used to deliver the final result? For example the deliverable maybe a stack of print, or if the client opts to organise printing, then a high resolution PDF. But does the client have the right to demand the Quark files and image files too? This does seem to becoming a more common issue and smaller agencies are coerced into compliance at the risk of losing the client altogether. Before the advent of computer generated artwork this never happened, because there were too many stages in the arcane process of moving from design to print for a client to either want, or be able to get involved. Many clients fail to realise that these programs are tools for trained designers that require a skilled user if the original design is not to be downgraded. Sadly some neither notice or care. Would they be so indifferent about people reverse engineering their products? But how about ideas, how are these valued? For small businesses there are neither the funds or time to protect concepts especially in the fast moving world of the Internet. So what is to stop a client picking up an idea and setting underemployed staff to create an in-house solution? Well, not much really so it is always a fine balance between pitching an idea and explaining how it benefits the client without disclosing too much.