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The difference is in composing the photo and choosing the triggering of the shot. In the motion sensor scenario, the photographer frames the shot and defines t

The difference is in composing the photo and choosing the triggering of the shot. In the motion sensor scenario, the photographer frames the shot and defines the conditions under which a photograph will be taken. In the monkey selfie, the photographer did not frame the shot, did not direct the camera, did not control conditions under which the photo would be taken (beyond the manufacturer's button). This there was not creative input by the photographer in the actual image captured.

bigtunacan 9y ago
I'm not so sure about that. Slater spent a couple of weeks with the monkeys to get this photo shot. I would suspect that he also then put the camera into a video recording mode or continuous burst plus time reviewing for a workable frame and then likely some Photoshopping.
- kbutler 9y ago
  "sweat of the brow" is not a consideration in us copyright law.
  - pavlov 9y ago
    If the camera was in a continuous shooting mode, I take it you're suggesting that the initial frames were authored by the photographer, and at some point the authorship changed after the monkeys had moved the camera enough? And the final frames in the sequence again became authored by the photographer when he grabbed the camera back? What if it had been wind moving the camera, rather than monkeys? Do you feel his authorship would have been equally lost in the middle of that sequence of frames?
    - kbutler 9y ago
      Slater didn't assert that. """ They were quite mischievous jumping all over my equipment, and it looked like they were already posing for the camera when one hit the button,” he told The Telegraph in 2011. “The sound got his attention and he kept pressing it. He must have taken hundreds of pictures by the time I got my camera back, but not very many were in focus. He obviously hadn’t worked that out yet." """ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/8615859/Monkey-steals-camera-to-snap-himself.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/8615... There is some doubt whether Slater actually used a remote trigger, but that wouldn't have been as good a story as the "monkey selfie", so the image may not have gone viral, though he'd have a better case to own the copyright.
  - TheOtherHobbes 9y ago
    This is going to become a huge problem. Imagine an AI that generates songs. Imagine it generates millions of songs. What are the odds some of those songs will accidentally and independently "copy" features deemed distinctive and commercially valuable in existing songs under copyright? Is this deliberate creative copyright infringement surrounded by noise, or is it the result of an aggressively fast random search of a limited symbol space - and what is the difference? Copyright law is going to have to change. It's either going to have to become irrelevant, or it's going to have to support hybrid not-quite-patent not-quite-copyright IP protection of generative/creative processes/personas, either manual or automated.
    - cabalamat 9y ago
      > Imagine an AI that generates songs. Imagine it generates millions of songs. What are the odds some of those songs will accidentally and independently "copy" features deemed distinctive and commercially valuable in existing songs under copyright? Another question is: what are the odds that a future song will inadvertantly copy one of the computer-generated songs? Given that there are only a finite number of notes and chords, that some note-sequences are more "musical" than others, and the computer can easily generate billions of songs, one can imagine a musical copyright troll (like a patent troll, but with copyrights): 1. creating a large number of songs on a computer 2. writing software to detect similarities between new songs and the computer song collection 3. shaking down songwriters/artists for profit > Copyright law is going to have to change. People have been saying that for some time. My own take is that it will change when it no longer suits the rich and powerful.
      - namelost 9y ago
        Copyright does not work that way. Copyright awards protections to a creative act. If you use a computer to generate songs, there is no creative act, and no copyright. If you copy a song someone else generated with a computer, there is no creative act, and no copyright. If you independently write a song, and a computer independently creates an identical song, there is a creative act, and you own the copyright to the song you created (but the song the computer created is in the public domain). If two people independently write the same song, then they both own the copyrights to their respective songs.
rbobby 9y ago
> composing the photo While not a traditional composition he did choose one specific one out of the millions of monkeys on the planet and in that specific location. And it is a compositional strategy that has perhaps never been tried before. /heheheheh
moomin 9y ago
This is a can of worms. What if the equipment malfunctions? What if you misconfigured it? What if something else triggered it? What if you take the shot yourself, but squeezed too early because someone shot a rifle?
- dis-sys 9y ago
  good points
- belorn 9y ago
  creative input is not that impossible to define. A malfunctioning equipment don't change the fact if a artist has made some creative input. So long the creative aspect is still visible (ie, the image is not all a single color), there is a argument to get copyright for the combined result. What the creator do not get is exclusive right to any work that has similar malfunctioning but with different creative input, so a interesting looking artifact from malfunctions should not be copyrightable. A misconfiguration could be argued to be a form of creative input. Debatable. A write should still be entitled to copyright, even if their books has odd words from when auto-correcting software misbehave. Who trigged the image is not very important so long the creative input exist. Arguable you could claim that a director has more claim to copyright that the person behind the device, but this is the place which practicality comes into place where society prefer to have a single author over many. From a philosophical perspective I would say that every person involved in creating a artistic work should get copyright ownership, similar to how every developer of the linux kernel has copyright ownership for each part they made.
King-Aaron 9y ago
I think the fundamental part of it, though, is: "It's a bloody monkey for heavens sake"
- Razengan 9y ago
  We are bloody apes for heaven's sake.
  - lucas_maximus83 9y ago
    Monkey != Ape
    - dageshi 9y ago
      Indeed, it's a good thing The Librarian didn't hear that...
      - beobab 9y ago
        Oook!

bigtunacan 9y ago

I'm not so sure about that. Slater spent a couple of weeks with the monkeys to get this photo shot. I would suspect that he also then put the camera into a video recording mode or continuous burst plus time reviewing for a workable frame and then likely some Photoshopping.

kbutler 9y ago
"sweat of the brow" is not a consideration in us copyright law.
- pavlov 9y ago
  If the camera was in a continuous shooting mode, I take it you're suggesting that the initial frames were authored by the photographer, and at some point the authorship changed after the monkeys had moved the camera enough? And the final frames in the sequence again became authored by the photographer when he grabbed the camera back? What if it had been wind moving the camera, rather than monkeys? Do you feel his authorship would have been equally lost in the middle of that sequence of frames?
  - kbutler 9y ago
    Slater didn't assert that. """ They were quite mischievous jumping all over my equipment, and it looked like they were already posing for the camera when one hit the button,” he told The Telegraph in 2011. “The sound got his attention and he kept pressing it. He must have taken hundreds of pictures by the time I got my camera back, but not very many were in focus. He obviously hadn’t worked that out yet." """ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/8615859/Monkey-steals-camera-to-snap-himself.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/8615... There is some doubt whether Slater actually used a remote trigger, but that wouldn't have been as good a story as the "monkey selfie", so the image may not have gone viral, though he'd have a better case to own the copyright.
- TheOtherHobbes 9y ago
  This is going to become a huge problem. Imagine an AI that generates songs. Imagine it generates millions of songs. What are the odds some of those songs will accidentally and independently "copy" features deemed distinctive and commercially valuable in existing songs under copyright? Is this deliberate creative copyright infringement surrounded by noise, or is it the result of an aggressively fast random search of a limited symbol space - and what is the difference? Copyright law is going to have to change. It's either going to have to become irrelevant, or it's going to have to support hybrid not-quite-patent not-quite-copyright IP protection of generative/creative processes/personas, either manual or automated.
  - cabalamat 9y ago
    > Imagine an AI that generates songs. Imagine it generates millions of songs. What are the odds some of those songs will accidentally and independently "copy" features deemed distinctive and commercially valuable in existing songs under copyright? Another question is: what are the odds that a future song will inadvertantly copy one of the computer-generated songs? Given that there are only a finite number of notes and chords, that some note-sequences are more "musical" than others, and the computer can easily generate billions of songs, one can imagine a musical copyright troll (like a patent troll, but with copyrights): 1. creating a large number of songs on a computer 2. writing software to detect similarities between new songs and the computer song collection 3. shaking down songwriters/artists for profit > Copyright law is going to have to change. People have been saying that for some time. My own take is that it will change when it no longer suits the rich and powerful.
    - namelost 9y ago
      Copyright does not work that way. Copyright awards protections to a creative act. If you use a computer to generate songs, there is no creative act, and no copyright. If you copy a song someone else generated with a computer, there is no creative act, and no copyright. If you independently write a song, and a computer independently creates an identical song, there is a creative act, and you own the copyright to the song you created (but the song the computer created is in the public domain). If two people independently write the same song, then they both own the copyrights to their respective songs.

rbobby 9y ago

> composing the photo While not a traditional composition he did choose one specific one out of the millions of monkeys on the planet and in that specific location. And it is a compositional strategy that has perhaps never been tried before. /heheheheh

moomin 9y ago

This is a can of worms. What if the equipment malfunctions? What if you misconfigured it? What if something else triggered it? What if you take the shot yourself, but squeezed too early because someone shot a rifle?

dis-sys 9y ago
good points
belorn 9y ago
creative input is not that impossible to define. A malfunctioning equipment don't change the fact if a artist has made some creative input. So long the creative aspect is still visible (ie, the image is not all a single color), there is a argument to get copyright for the combined result. What the creator do not get is exclusive right to any work that has similar malfunctioning but with different creative input, so a interesting looking artifact from malfunctions should not be copyrightable. A misconfiguration could be argued to be a form of creative input. Debatable. A write should still be entitled to copyright, even if their books has odd words from when auto-correcting software misbehave. Who trigged the image is not very important so long the creative input exist. Arguable you could claim that a director has more claim to copyright that the person behind the device, but this is the place which practicality comes into place where society prefer to have a single author over many. From a philosophical perspective I would say that every person involved in creating a artistic work should get copyright ownership, similar to how every developer of the linux kernel has copyright ownership for each part they made.

King-Aaron 9y ago

I think the fundamental part of it, though, is: "It's a bloody monkey for heavens sake"

Razengan 9y ago
We are bloody apes for heaven's sake.
- lucas_maximus83 9y ago
  Monkey != Ape
  - dageshi 9y ago
    Indeed, it's a good thing The Librarian didn't hear that...
    - beobab 9y ago
      Oook!