Thread:Mathmagician/@comment-4509522-20130311041238/@comment-4674838-20130311061245

I would not consider myself an expert in copyright law, but here's my understanding:

Buying a work:
 * If someone buys an image, they merely own the physical object, but the artist retains the copyright unless there is a written contract stating otherwise.

"work made for hire"
 * If a work is legally classified as a work made for hire, the author does not own the copyright. Examples of work made for hire:
 * The artist is an employee (not a contractor or freelancer) who works for a company, and the image was produced in the scope of their employment. In this case, the company owns the copyright.
 * The artist works as a freelancer, but a commissioning party has commissioned an image and both the commissioning party and artist have signed a written contract stating that the work is a work made for hire. In this case, the commissioning party owns the copyright. (If there was no written contract, then this falls under the case of "buying an work" which I described above.)

"some have said that Deviant artists don't have copyright over their images"
 * This is false. DeviantArt's Terms of Service are very clear under #4 that copyright holders retain the copyright of their work when they post it on DeviantArt.

Basically, to summarize, the artist generally owns the copyright to their work, unless it is stated otherwise in writing.

As far as how you handle the situation, that's up to you. Personally I would take down the image on any good faith request by the artist. (That's pretty much what Wikia staff would do if the artist filed a DMCA takedown notice to their Copyright Agent as specified in Wikia's Terms of Use.)