Only thing you're missing out on is the ability to work on and towards your own projects.
Not sure about the average freelancer, but most technical freelancers I know see it as a stepping stone towards getting their own little SaaS or iPhone app business off the ground.
If you're working full-time for a company, IME contracts tend to own all intellectual output at your time there, at home or otherwise. This doesn't matter much if all you do is put out MIT licensed experimental programming language parsers, but I wouldn't put many companies above executing on those terms should a product you build in your off-time achieve success.
If you are billing significantly above $100 per hour, you are not a commodity technical talent and have leverage in negotiations. Redline the IP clauses you find objectionable, and supply alternate phrasing. Stress that whatever is paid for by the project from inception to delivery remains solidly available to the client. Lots more details for freelancers to work out, but I don't want to hijack this discussion and just wanted to point out you don't have to accept the standard boilerplate if you don't want to.
I think it's possible that you've misunderstood the comment I was replying to. The poster is referring to permanent employees under a ROWE-like system.
As you say, I would have to be in dire financial straits before I accept a freelance contract that even casually mentioned IP outside the scope of a given clients project.
I've worked in a half-dozen companies here in the US and never was asked to sign something remotely like that. Obviously there were IP clauses but they were all reasonable. That sucks if it's commonplace in the UK.
Not sure if it's commonplace but I've worked at a comparable number of companies full-time and there's almost always a clause that mentions it. I don't think I've ever been threatened with it being enforced, but it's one of the reasons I went independent.
Not sure about the average freelancer, but most technical freelancers I know see it as a stepping stone towards getting their own little SaaS or iPhone app business off the ground.
If you're working full-time for a company, IME contracts tend to own all intellectual output at your time there, at home or otherwise. This doesn't matter much if all you do is put out MIT licensed experimental programming language parsers, but I wouldn't put many companies above executing on those terms should a product you build in your off-time achieve success.