You guys do have a point. I usually pay freelancers to do my stuff and I feel bad if someone is going to run away after getting their work. I guess it depends

You guys do have a point. I usually pay freelancers to do my stuff and I feel bad if someone is going to run away after getting their work. I guess it depends on the scope of work. I think in Canada we have a law where if you do something criminal then you can't charge the person for stealing. i.e. If you are selling drugs and I steal your drugs then you can't take me to court. In this situation if I were to steal your code/work then stealing it back or making it stop working would suffice. If it's a .php script maybe make it refer to your web-server for certain parts of the script so that the full functionality isn't there if the user runs away with your code. Something like passing back a token for verification as with serial numbers. A phone-home mechanism of some sort.