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Copyrighting photos is something thats done regularly by photographers, I see nothing being "abused" there. How else are they supposed to make money?

• wl 9y ago
  He was abusing copyright by claiming rights to a photo he didn't take.
  • soundwave106 9y ago
    It looks like the case referenced in the Daily Mail was settled: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/09/12/monkey-selfie-case-settled-british-photographer-agrees-share/ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/09/12/monkey-selfie-cas... I personally think "abusing" copyright is too strong of a word here. The key test on whether this sort of work is copyright worthy is the "threshold of originality" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threshold_of_originality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threshold_of_originality). I can see it possible to argue this passed the threshold for the monkey selfie case (obviously that's debatable, and the person was not successful, but it is not a completely outrageous argument in my opinion). It's definitely a murky area of copyright law, and one I can see increasingly getting muddier as art becomes more and more machine assisted.
    • wl 9y ago
      Threshold of originality is not the issue here. That's more applicable to things like security camera footage. 17 USC §102(a) confines copyright to "works of authorship." Without an author, there is no copyright. To date, only natural persons and corporations have been held to be authors.