For an employee carrying out photography in the course of theirr employment, copyright of the work will belong to the employer unless agreed otherwise. This may apply even if the employee uses their own camera, and shoots outside normal working hours.

For a freelance working for a client, copyright will belong to the photographer, not the client, unless agreed otherwise. Despite client expectations this applies to commissioned work where the client provides a brief, pays a fee, pays expenses incurred and even the cost of equipment hire.

That is the simple and straightforward position described by the 1988 Copyright Designs and Patents Act. Unfortunately it has become muddied by market forces and opportunism.

For employees, it is not unheard of for employers to demand ownership of all photos taken whilst employed. EPUK knows of one instance where an agency photographer employee was told by their employer that work she had shot out of hours for her own portfolio were their property, including her family snaps. Check your contract of employment carefully!

For freelances, what precisely constitutes employment can be an issue. There is an argument that a contracted freelance who works shifts is employed for the purposes of copyright despite being self-employed in tax and employment terms. The test appears to be whether the photographer determines their own hours of work and is free to decline any given assignment.

A much more common problem is the imposition of rights-grabbing contracts by commissioning clients. A copyright buyout ought to command far higher fees than that payable
for first use because it represents higher value to both parties. Whilst the law allows assignment of copyright to the client, the arrangement ought to be equitably negotiated not coerced.  Large clients have far too much market power for this to happen and photographers fears of losing work have only encouraged demands for ever greater rights for less money. The outcome is that many large publishing clients now expect exactly the same rights that they would obtain from employees, but with none of the costs of equipment, workspace, computers, software, pensions schemes, holiday and sick pay. The compliant freelance bears the costs and likely soon disappears under a mountain of accumulating debt on the fees and terms available.

The solution here is to be very careful about what you agree to, and if possible to require clients to agree to your terms and conditions.

In general no. But there are some fair use exceptions. For instance you may reproduce a copyright image for the purposes of criticism or review. And you can make personal copies for the purpose of study.

Yes, absolutely. The web is no different from any other publishing medium.

Virtually anything you can see will have been created by someone and they will automatically own the copyright. They do not need to make a copyright statement, copyright is implicit. So you should start from the assumption that everything is copyright unless and until you can establish otherwise.

It would be very helpful if they did, but for a variety of reasons they do not.

• Not all photographers are able to embed metadata in their files because they do not own software that has the capability. And some don't know they should.
• If images are uploaded direct from a digital camera to the web, there will be no IPTC caption or copyright information. Some cameras can embed copyright info in EXIF fields instead, but this is non standard.
• Most cheaper image editing programs cannot read or write IPTC data, and if you load an image which contains IPTC then re-save it, the data is lost.
• Rather a lot of the digital asset management software used by large media companies, especially newspaper desks, for many years allegedly contained 'bugs' that stripped authors' copyright statements. Remarkably these same bugs often substituted the newspaper's details, even though they were not the copyright owners. At the time of writing, these bugs do not appear to have been entirely fixed after nearly 20 years of use. Wilfully altering copyright statements is of course illegal.
• Until Photoshop CS3 in 2007, Photoshop's 'Save for web' option (incredibly) discarded IPTC information
• Until recently, web browsers discarded IPTC information when saving an image from the web. So even if the metadata was present, it was long gone by the time you went looking for it.
• Similarly some email clients lost the IPTC data when you saved attached image files. This was particularly an issue with Outlook and Outlook Express, which used Internet Explorer for their image handling, as IE did not preserve IPTC info.
• MSIE, the most commonly used web browser, insists on saving bitmap files (.bmp) from some sites where, in order to prevent 'leeching' the webserver technology does not allow direct access to the JPEG file. Bitmap files cannot contain IPTC records, therefore the data is lost.

One of the great advantages of digital images is that they can be endlessly replicated and distributed without degradation. Unfortunately, the chances are that at some time in their lifecycle they will encounter one of the issues above, and thereafter contain no copyright ownership information at all and become 'orphan works'.

This does NOT however mean they are free of copyright. You must not rely on the absence of this data as evidence of lapsed copyright or public domain status. Copyright still applies exactly the same and the lack of information simply means you will have to look elsewhere to find out who the rights owner is. This is frustating for both parties but there is no solution at present, and no technical way to 'lock' the data.

Identifying the copyright holder may be straightforward or require some detective work. Take special care if you have found an image that you are interested in via a search engine such as Google Images. They only cache a copy and the thumbnail page does not display any copyright warning. You must go to the original site to see the image in its original context along with any ownership details. Many people have incurred large bills by assuming Google Image thumbnails may be freely used.

Work displayed on most websites will be associated with a user or domain owner who may be approached. Image files themselves will often contain metadata identifying the rights owner and giving contact details, but unfortunately browsers do not support display of this information. There is however an extension for Firefox called EXIFviewer which will display IPTC and EXIF metadata.

If you cannot find the rights owner it is only safe to assume that although the photo is an 'orphan work' it is still someone's copyright and is unsafe to use. Copyright persists for 70 years after the death of the photographer so some very old photos may be OK, but beware that some agencies regard scans as new work so within copyright even though the originals have lapsed.

Note that the copyright holder may not be the publisher, who may be using the image under licence. Equally, sometimes the credited author will not the copyright owner because they have assigned copyright to someone else but retained their moral right to be identified as the author.

Using an image that is copyright requires permission of the copyright holder. If you do not obtain permission, your use constitutes an infringement. The copyright holder can then sue you for damages.

Thousands of bills for retrospective licenses have been sent out by both Getty and Corbis, relating to images allegedly used without license by websites. These have asserted very high levels of fee in line with US statutory damages rather that UK peanuts even when they have involved UK based domains. They give 5 or 7 days to pay.

Many recipients have wondered whether these are scams. They are not. Getty Images is the largest stock photo library in the world, and Corbis is the second largest.

This is all discussed at great length in a panic-stricken and angry thread that is now 67 pages long and has been raging for over a year at the Federation of Small Business forums. Dozens, perhaps hundreds of these notices have gone to UK citizens.

Without exception these bills have not so far resulted in any court action. Getty seem to be trying to compel settlement rather than sue. They are using UK solicitors who are by all accounts very persistent. Some have paid but many of the accused are arguing - some claim to have legitimate licenses obtained elsewhere, others dispute the amounts (typically £1,500-£7,000) as bearing no relation to Getty's own prices for legitimate use, that there was no way they could know the origin of the images or their copyright status etc.

But there is an exception here, albeit from an anonymous poster:

Having been caught in the the middle of this almighty mess because of one $20 image I legally licensed from a 3rd party that defaulted Getty persued me for costs and fees of near $2500.

As I am UK based I responded to their threats that US court action had absolutely no merit and I challenged them to bring it to a UK court for settlement. They didnt and summary judgement was granted in a US court which means the next time I set foot in the USA I will be arrested. ...

Maybe it's true, maybe it isn't. Maybe web publications are able to be deemed to occur in the US if the site is visible in the US. Maybe Getty is building a class action against all the UK infringers who are arguing, which it will pursue later in the US courts. We don't know, nobody does. If you receive one of these notices we would strongly recommend you consult a specialist copyright lawyer as soon as possible - and please let us know the outcome

Model releases have little or no relevance to copyright. There is no copyright in the human face or form, so no claim can arise. Whether this remains true after the creative work of a cosmetic surgeon or tattooist is unknown, but we would expect a photograph to be deemed a new work as a representation rather than a copy.

A model release is a binding contract that agrees to relinquish specific future claims of equity in return for a 'valuable consideration'. This is usually payment, but can be prints or some other agreeable exchange. However it cannot be nothing; without 'valuable consideration' no contract is formed.

The requirement for model releases arises only in advertising and marketing use of images, where endorsement by the subject is implied. A simple model release does not provide for defamatory use, distortion or misrepresentation of the subject, it simply says in effect 'I am not later going to demand a further fee' for the purposes to which this photograph may be put'. More complex model releases can waive extensive rights of redress for defamation, privacy, publicity rights etc.

One other important issue revolves around model releases and minors. If a model is to be paid and is under 18 they must be licensed models else an offence is committed. Licensing is a function of local authorities.

Property releases are similar to model releases. A property release is a binding contract that formalises the agreement of a copyright owner whose work is the subject of, or featured in, a photograph. The agreement will set out what use may be made of the photograph and what rights, if any, are retained by the property owner.

Contrary to popular belief they are not generally required for images of buildings in UK, because although buildings are copyright designs, the 1988 Copyright Designs and Patents Act provides an exemption for certain works on permanent public display, which buildings almost always are. Most scuplture is also similarly exempt.

In theory any 'designed object' may be subject to the designer's or manufacturers' copyright, so a photograph that includes almost any product be argued to require a property release. However a photograph is not a copy of a product but a representation and will generally comprise a sufficiently a new and original work for this to be invalid.

The usefulness and applicability of property releases under UK law is therefore limited in most circumstances, although any marketing or advertising use that implies endorsement by the 'brand' could be hazardous without a release that explicitly permits this. This is not a copyright issue as such, but one of commercial interest, passing off or defamation. Such releases usually cost a great deal of money to obtain. Fortunately this issue does not arise in editorial use.

Releases may appear more to have more copyright relevance for photographs of logos or registered trademarks, where 'copying' goes beyond incidental inclusion. Here the mere act of photography may infringe. Despite the threats of some trademark holders, it is hard to see what damages could arise directly from the copying itself and the position remains uncertain for editorial use.

As with model releases, the client who publishes the photograph assumes ultimate responsibility for any infringement. This concern has led many stock libraries to require property releases to be available even when they are irrelevant or unobtainable.

This is an awkward or impossible requirement for photographers that also has its origins in rather different US law regarding buildings, which affords post-1999 buildings of US-registered design full copyright protection in limited circumstances.