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Wikipedia refuses to delete photo taken by monkey

• christop 12y ago
  The image is used on the English Wikipedia page for "Selfie", and according to the image page on Wikimedia Commons: "This file is in the public domain, because as the work of a non-human animal, it has no human author in whom copyright is vested." http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Macaca_nigra_self-portrait.jpg http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Macaca_nigra_self-por...
  • nitrogen 12y ago
    It's interesting that the deletion nomination tag is still on the image, but the deletion discussion is marked as closed.
    • zoips 12y ago
      Which is too bad. I'm curious about rtc's argument around machines taking the pictures. It seems the logical conclusion of his argument is that if you buy a camera, and the software on the camera takes a picture without the act of camera owner, then the owner of the camera doesn't own the copyright but instead the company that made the camera? That seems like a very strange conclusion.
      • bitJericho 12y ago
        I think the issue at hand is that (from what I've read) the photographer set the camera down without intending for the monkey to pick it up and start snapping. I don't think anybody would be arguing about the copyright had the photographer given the monkey the camera.
        • JoeAltmaier 12y ago
          Googling I find the requirements for copyright: "the work must have been developed independently by its author, and there must have been some creativity involved in the creation" This case is certainly debatable on those points.
          • dhimes 12y ago
            Serious question: If I steal a camera and take pictures with it, am I the copyright owner of those pictures?
            • marcosdumay 12y ago
              Yes, and a thief.
            • jahewson 12y ago
              Yes, though if you're taking a picture of a scene which was set up by someone else then they may own the copyright in that scene. There can be multiple owners of copyright of different aspects of an image, e.g. if I make my own cartoon and include Darth Vader as a character, then I naturally own my own the copyright to my work but it still infringes on Disney's copyright and I don't have the right to reproduce those aspects publicly. Also if the images you take have no creative merit then there's no copyright.
        • ghaff 12y ago
          People might be arguing but I tend to think they'd be wrong. (i.e. giving a bunch of monkeys cameras to shoot selfies is pretty clearly a planned creating act). But distinguishing that from the (apparent) situation here seems like splitting incredibly fine legal hairs and I don't really understand why Wikimedia seems to thin this is an important principle on which to make a stand.
    • TazeTSchnitzel 12y ago
      It's not closed, the layout is just confusing. The discussion in January was closed, there's a new one now.
• deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
• mariuolo 12y ago
  Shouldn't they ask the monkey for permission before publishing it then?
  • mnw21cam 12y ago
    This is a matter of degrees. (No, not that type of degree.) Let's assume for the moment that the monkey, as a non-human, cannot own copyright. Therefore it is a choice between the human holding copyright and the image being in the public domain. If a monkey draws a picture using mud on a sheet of bark that has fallen on the ground, and a human notices the picture and picks it up, does the human own copyright? (Probably not, in my opinion.) If the monkey picks up a camera offered to it by a human, who has set up the camera, switched it on, etc., and the monkey takes a picture, does the human hold copyright? (Not sure.) If a human sets up a camera on a tripod, pre-focusses it, sets up a motion detection system to trigger the shutter, and the monkey walks past it triggering an image to be captured, does the human hold copyright? (Definitely, in my opinion.)
    • cpncrunch 12y ago
      I suspect it will involve handing over a lot of money to lawyers to figure this one out.
    • collyw 12y ago
      >If a human sets up a camera on a tripod, pre-focusses it, sets up a motion detection system to trigger the shutter, and the monkey walks past it triggering an image to be captured, does the human hold copyright? (Definitely, in my opinion.) Conversely, I see lots of cool pictures of people doing crazy stuff, kayakers, going off massive waterfalls, bikers doing backflips, street performers, magicians. To me it is the subject of the picture who has spent years training, he / she is what makes the picture interesting (the photographer may make the colours a bit nicer, or the focus sharper, but the subject is what makes the picture). Yet the photographer owns the copyright. (To be fair I kind of agree with your last point, but I think that the photographer automatically getting copyright is the problem. I doubt giving the subject ownership would be enforceable, and would likely lead to many more problems related to censorship).
• mjgoins 12y ago
  "as it is jeopardising his livelihood" -- So if a monkey hadn't taken a selfie, he'd be starving and homeless.
  • kaonashi 12y ago
    If he hadn't made a popular photograph, his income would be lower.
  • Alupis 12y ago
    Doesn't the monkey technically own copyright over the images? I mean.. just because it's this guy's camera doesn't mean he has copyright, unless the monkey transferred copyright to him via some sort of agreement.
    • viggity 12y ago
      Copyright isn't assigned to the tool owner, it is assigned to the person who created the work. I use Visual Studio, that doesn't make the code I write owned by Microsoft even they "own" Visual Studio. Bad analogy, but you get the point.
      • autarch 12y ago
        Actually, I think it's a very good analogy. Here's another. If I leave my laptop running Visual Studio out and a monkey bangs on the keyboard to make a program (by accident, just as with this photo), I don't own the copyright to that program.
        • JoeAltmaier 12y ago
          You do if its your monkey!
        • swah 12y ago
          What if the monkey just press F8 and build it and that is the version you release?
    • 12y ago
• coldcode 12y ago
  And a new monkey business is born - letting animals take pictures and make money.
• adultSwim 12y ago
  Best headline I've read in a long time.
  • tripzilch 12y ago
    You must have missed this one, then: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/russia-loses-control-of-satellite-full-of-geckos-9628002.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/russia-loses-contr... (the actual title is funnier than what's in the URL)
• 7952 12y ago
  This fight is a fantastic way for David Slater to generate more royalty income. Think how many news outlet are going to use that image today!
  • SeanLuke 12y ago
    Taken directly from Wikimedia?
    • TazeTSchnitzel 12y ago
      At the very least, the Guardian have paid for it.
• deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
• radicalbyte 12y ago
  The photo would have been unremarkable, worthless were it not taken by a monkey. The value is the novelty, the random act. Not the "setup". I can't blame him for trying to make a buck from it, but he's really pushing he boundaries of reason by claiming copyright for a creative work that he did not create.
  • pcrh 12y ago
    How is this picture different from any taken remotely of a natural scene? The monkey did not know she was taking a picture.
    • voidlogic 12y ago
      If a human infant took a photo, IMHO the courts would hold they took it... regardless of the fact they did not know they were taking a picture.
      • pcrh 12y ago
        >If a human infant took a photo I'd bet that that idea has already been tested in the courts. I believe that the result is that the guardians of the child hold the rights in trust. A child is still human though, and courts do not yet assign (to my knowledge) property rights to non-human animals.
        • kbenson 12y ago
          Which muddies that particular example, but the spirit of the example is unaddressed. For example, if a human adult with no understanding of what a camera is or what the act of taking a picture entails[1] took the picture by accident, would they not deserve the rights? 1: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/04/140403-brazil-peru-amazon-rainforest-uncontacted-tribes-finai-illegal-logging-world/ http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/04/140403-brazi...
          • pcrh 12y ago
• stephenbez 12y ago
  Can't David Slater issue a DMCA take down request which Wikipedia would have to comply with? In order for it to be put up again, wouldn't that require some action from the rights holder, which in this case is an animal and can't do any action?
  • tjr 12y ago
    So then would all art created by animals automatically go into some sort of unpublishable void? If the issue is making money, perhaps they can come to some arrangement with the monkey for offering signed prints?
  • Symmetry 12y ago
    Complying with a DMCA request isn't legally mandated, it simply shields the provider from liability.
  • jahewson 12y ago
    Yes, the photographer certainly could file a DMCA takedown, if he hasn't already. No, action from the rights holder is not required to restore the material. Remember, the rights holder is the person filing the DMCA takedown - at least it should be. For the material to be restored it requires the poster of the material to file a counter notice, not the rights holder.
• curiousgeorgio 12y ago
  The monkey does not own the copyright, just as my intervalometer does not own the copyright to my time lapse photos, and a carefully constructed rube goldberg machine triggered by an ant (and later pressing the shutter release button) doesn't make the ant the copyright holder. Wikimedia's own argument states that "the photographer would have had to make substantial contributions to the final image." In creating the circumstances for the monkey to hit the shutter release button, the photographer did in fact make the most substantial contributions to the final image. In another light, do we give camera operators the ultimate/highest credit for the work of a studio-produced motion picture? No - they are credited, but the director is the one who created the circumstances under which the camera operator's actions capture the essential product of a whole team's work, guided by the director.
  • Symmetry 12y ago
    But in this case the monkey was also the director. If David Slater had been intending or worked towards what ended up happening in some way I'd be a lot more sympathetic to his copyright claims, but as it is he didn't have any agency in creation of the photograph except in owning the camera and failing to secure it.
    • curiousgeorgio 12y ago
      And I would argue that even if David Slater didn't fully intend for the monkey to take the photo, he had more intention or expectation for that happening than the monkey had for taking a photo. The monkey was only interested in the sound made by the camera, not in directing a photo shoot.
      • Symmetry 12y ago
        Well, it might be that the monkey wouldn't deserve copyright even if copyright could reside in a monkey. There are broad classes of works like phone books which don't get copyright at all: http://copyright.uslegal.com/enumerated-categories-of-copyrightable-works/creativity-requirement/ http://copyright.uslegal.com/enumerated-categories-of-copyri...
• notahacker 12y ago
  The bigger picture here is that the Wikimedia Foundation is apparently willing to spend donors' funds on defending the claimed right to publish this. Is "professional photographers don't have the right to claim ownership over expensively set-up and finished work if an animal presses the shutter button" really an important principle of freedom of information worth fighting for? Or is it more of a complicated case that may possibly be winnable through an arcane technicality in the US legal system, but even if successful would probably be less useful to the average Wikipedia-user than the equivalent amount spent on cleaning up existing copyright-free content. Nice as the image is, more useful and interesting stuff gets deleted from Wikipedia every day.
  • polarix 12y ago
    Clarifying the class of physical phenomena which are considered legally able to hold copyright does sound like a foundational inquiry. But I would not have expected a donation to Wikimedia to be put toward it.
    • rmc 12y ago
      Not really, it very rarely comes up. There are much bigger battles to fght.
  • lmm 12y ago
    The Wikimedia Foundation long ago fell to the Iron Law of Oligarchy. Many people assume they're donating to cover server costs, and Wikipedia's advertising is carefully constructed to avoid challenging this assumption. But in fact most servers are already donated inclusive of all costs by large companies like Google and Yahoo. Most donations go to funding the ever-increasing Wikimedia payroll.
    • huskyr 12y ago
      You actually have some proof for these silly insinuating claims you're making? The Wikimedia Foundation produces monthly reports on everything that they do, and large part of donations are actually used to 'run the servers'. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Report,_May_2014 https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Report,...
• basseq 12y ago
  Regardless of where the copyright ownership falls, it is not within Wikipedia's power to make that call. David Slater claims copyright, and without a legal opinion to the contrary, they don't seem to have a leg to stand on. This seems like Wikipedia editors overreaching.
  • Symmetry 12y ago
    If I were to claim that I had copyright of the photo, would that prohibit David Slater from using it until the courts had settled things? It is absolutely Wikipedia's prerogative to use a photo they believe they are entitled to use. Now, they do lose the DMCA safe harbor exemption by not complying, but that only matters if a court should hold that they're guilty of copyright infringement.
    • basseq 12y ago
      Point of clarification: Wikipedia isn't just using the photo, they are offering it up to others to use as part of their "collection of royalty-free images" (Wikimedia Commons). In a sense, they are acting as a distributor, not just an end-user.
• deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
• CanSpice 12y ago
  Legally, how would this differ from a monkey stepping on a remote trigger, or stepping in front of a motion detector to trigger a camera to take a picture? Are all of the pictures on Snapshot Serengeti (http://www.snapshotserengeti.org/ http://www.snapshotserengeti.org/) copyrighted by the animals in them?
  • JoeAltmaier 12y ago
    Of course only humans can hold copyright. But an issue here is, the photographer never intended to take the picture (in this way); it was an accident. So its debatable.
    • bdamm 12y ago
      It's not an accident - the photographer recognized the opportunity, and allowed the animals to continue. He put himself there to be part of the animal's scene. He was there to photograph the animals, and that's what happened. Ultimately, every photograph is an accident; nothing bad happens in between the photographer's recognition of the correct moment, and the exposure of the medium. That time is non-zero, and bad things can happen in between those times, and when they don't you get the photo you want. And how many photographers hold down the shutter, while they reel off a dozen pictures, hoping that one of those photos is a good one? Were those photos "accidents" and therefore not copyrightable? I don't think the courts would agree.
      • slantyyz 12y ago
        >> I don't think the courts would agree. I'm actually interested in seeing this go to a decision in the courts. There's clearly a division of opinion in the discussion here, and it would make for an interesting case and precedent.
      • JoeAltmaier 12y ago
        Probably not a lot of 'allowing' going on - don't want to get between a Macaque and its toy. Anyway the idea is, the requirement for copyright is "developed independently by the author" and "some creativity involved". It was not 'by the author. And is it creativity if its an incident totally out of the control of the author? Debatable.
• Fastidious 12y ago
  Wikimedia Foundation is wrong. The photo belongs to the owner of the camera who captured the photo. This, of course, would be a total different issue if the operator of the camera was human.
  • huherto 12y ago
    He did more than owning the camera. He set up the camera and let the monkey play with it, hoping to get lucky with a great shot.
    • ASneakyFox 12y ago
      The monkey stole the camera. Either way though its the monkeys work. Not his
• aaron987 12y ago
  I tried to research this topic further, but the Wikipedia pages about copyright makes no mention of monkeys.
• sslayer 12y ago
  So does the Cow own the Milk?
• wrath 12y ago
  http://www.blogcdn.com/travel.aol.co.uk/media/2013/01/323ng125p086upnationalgeographic512949.jpg http://www.blogcdn.com/travel.aol.co.uk/media/2013/01/323ng1... My understanding is that this image was captured by a camera trigger that was setup National Geographic photographer (Sorry, I'm unsure the name). This has been a highly published photo by National Geographic; does this mean that the tiger should be owed all the royalties and not the photographer?
  • wmil 12y ago
    Well the photographer set up the camera and the trigger. Framing the background is an artistic contribution. And the important part is that the photographer would have still owned the copyright if it was a human who set off the trigger. However, imagine a person picked up his camera and took a selfie. The person would own the copyright, not the owner of the camera. The photographer didn't contribute anything artistic. This is a monkey selfie, so it's in an interesting legal situation. The best comparison is to abstract paintings done by elephants. Does anyone own a copyright on those?
• logfromblammo 12y ago
  The monkey is a non-economic actor. She does not even need to be included in the equation. The photographer was the sole driving force in bringing the image to the human marketplace. He is the last link in the chain that is even capable of exercising ownership over the image. His equipment was at risk while in macaque hands. His judgement culled the hundreds of unfocused, uncomposed, or otherwise useless images. He probably did post-production work on the photo to make the colors look right in varying presentation media. There is just no way--if you believe in copyright at all, that is--that the copyright on the photo is not 100% vested in David Slater. If he had any reason to believe he could not personally profit from putting additional work into macaque selfies and publishing them to a human audience, every last one would be deleted, to make room on the card for something that might pay the rent. Besides that, unilaterally declaring it to be public domain just doesn't satisfy the "don't be a dick" rule. Here's a hypothetical. Slater, instead of rigging the shutter button to take still photos, sets it up to start a video recording on the first press, then to apply a frame marker to the video for every subsequent press. Before allowing the macaque to take the camera, he starts the video recording. Upon retrieving the recording, he then deletes all frames that would not be usable as a still photo. By the "shutter button" standard, he owns the copyright. If rephrasing the technical aspects of the creation scenario results in different copyrights, your criterion is too flimsy to be used as a copyright guideline. Clearly, the "shutter button" standard is bullshit, especially given that any monkey can push a button. My criterion is that the market would never have had access to the image at all, were it not for Slater bringing it forth as trade goods. Therefore, I name him owner of the original photo, and from that, allow him the right to enforce exclusivity and license any copies, as permitted by established copyright law. The monkey, being non-human, and a non-participant in human markets, is not competent to hold ownership over anything. It has no specific rights to its own likeness, or to any of its own creations. Original ownership of property derives from the act of making something available for trade, even if no price is specified, and in respecting the trade offers of others. Wikimedia Foundation really needs to rein in its own troop of button-pushing yard-apes before lawyers get involved.
  • Daishiman 12y ago
    "The market" is not a criterion for copyright; in fact it has nothing to do with copyright at all. Some things are marketable and cannot be copyrighted, some things can be copyrighted and are not marketable at all The photographer did not set out to get monkeys to push the trigger on the camera; the final situation that set in motion the creation of the work was not put forth by himself and is a complete accident. There was a case of a bird stealing a camera and flying with it; it was considered to be in the public domain. It's unlikely that a ruling on this would show anything different.
• sosuke 12y ago
  In the event he doesn't own the copyrights to the photos, I wonder if David Slater would have released the photos with the same story of the monkey taking a selfie if he had known it would be without financial gain. Reading the nomination page https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Macaca_nigra_self-portrait_(rotated_and_cropped).jpg#Macaca_nigra_self-portrait_and_derivatives https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests... just makes me feel bad for David Slater in the end. They argue that he had no part in the photos creation. If he had not been there taking the photos, this photo wouldn't have existed.
  • marianminds 12y ago
    The burden of that argument is that you'd never be able to 'own' photos of strangers or anybody who doesn't sign a release, or stranger's pets, or any piece of art or architecture, because the scene or object that gives the photos its essence was actually created largely by other people. You have to tie photo ownership to the physical act of taking them, and this one was not taken by him. He hadn't even intended to give the monkey his camera or tried to arrange for it - it was pure fluke, unless you count the agency of the monkey. Which here almost seems more legitimate.
    • sosuke 12y ago
      For clarity This is public domain footage now, because the bird stole the camera: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/02/bird-steals-camera-video_n_4371165.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/02/bird-steals-camera-... This is copyright, because the photographer strapped cameras to the bird: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigeon_photography http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigeon_photography "A photograph of Schlosshotel Kronberg (then called Schloss Friedrichshof after its owner Kaiserin Friedrich) became famous due to its accidental inclusion of the photographer's wing tips. In a breach of copyright it was shown in German cinemas as part of the weekly newsreel in 1929.[16]"
    • javert 12y ago
      Nonsense. Whoever owns the camera has a good common-sense claim to copyright. By your logic, supposedly Slater could sue the monkey for illicit use of his camera.
• jeroen 12y ago
  From the article: "To claim copyright, the photographer would have had to make substantial contributions to the final image, and even then, they'd only have copyright for those alterations, not the underlying image. This means that there was no one on whom to bestow copyright, so the image falls into the public domain," a recent transparency report from Wikimedia said. Even if the photographer would not hold the copyright to the raw image, his post-processing would give him copyright to his alterations. Thus, the final image does not fall into the public domain and Wikimedia has no right to use it like they do.
  • FireBeyond 12y ago
    Right, and there is very little “public good” to come of this other than “Wiki(pedi)a get to benefit from the traffic this might bring”.
  • deong 12y ago
    I believe you need to substantially transform a public domain work in order to qualify for copyright on a derived work. If the original image is public domain, it's not clear that cropping and basic editing would qualify. I think Wikimedia is in the wrong here, for what it's worth, but I don't think it's clear cut either way.
• onan_barbarian 12y ago
  This is highly relevant to most startups in that it may establish a useful precedent on who owns code written by monkeys.
• mrjames 12y ago
  Did Wikipedia get permission from the monkey to post the photo? Clearly they didn't think this through. In cases like this there should be implied copyright holder. Let's say I'm on vacation with a friend. I hand a stranger my camera to take a picture of us. Does that mean I can't post the picture on my facebook page without officially assigning copyright to myself? Of course not.
  • x1798DE 12y ago
    Not all photos are burdened by copyright. If no human owns the copyright, it's in the public domain.
• huherto 12y ago
  Among other arguments. There was a moment on time when Slated owned the photograph in a very real sense. At that moment he had all the rights to the photograph. It was in his possession. No one could have forced him to release it. He releases the photograph with the expectation of being protected by the copyright. If he looses the copyright then the copyright is not serving the purpose it was supposed to serve. To give certainty to people that invest their time and resources to create things and release them.
  • chrismcb 12y ago
    But he did not create the photograph.
• NAFV_P 12y ago
  The article still leaves the reader in the dark as to how the image was made public in the first place. From the article> Wikimedia's editors are split on the legal issues. One user, Saffron Blaze, said in a comment section associated with the photo: "I am not sure I am convinced by the no copyright argument. In this case the outcome was very disrespectful of the photographer who created the conditions that allowed these photos to be created. There are some jurisdictions where even the monkey could be imbued with the copyright as its creator." Original source [0]. As an old art student, I can readily sympathise with this. Spontaneity is often considered to be an important component of great art. [0] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Featured_picture_candidates/File:Macaca_nigra_self-portrait_%28rotated_and_cropped%29.jpg#File:Macaca_nigra_self-portrait_.28rotated_and_cropped.29.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Featured_picture_...
  • nailer 12y ago
    Thanks for finding the source. The newspaper could have at least added a nofollow link to the wikipedia article for those of us who want to see the picture at full resolution.
• RIMR 12y ago
  So if I rob a store and I activate a motion-detecting camera, do I own the copyright on the evidence against me? Can I claim self-incrimination if MY footage is used in court against me? Can I sue my victim for copyright infringement if they share footage with the media?
  • jahewson 12y ago
    No, such footage would not pass the basic creativity requirements for copyright eligibility.
    • spinlock 12y ago
      I disagree. The burglary is obviously performance art.
      • contingencies 12y ago
        Certainly if you write about it first and can therefore demonstrate that it was a considered act of the same with plans to publish.
    • deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
• bjt 12y ago
  Wikipedia is being disingenuous and immature here. I would be very surprised to see a court agree with their argument. Courts generally try to avoid reaching perverse results that undermine the purpose of the laws they're enforcing. Copyright exists to support the kind of work that Slater was doing.
  • jpatokal 12y ago
    ...and asserting that images accidentally created by non-human animals belong to the public domain undermines copyright how, exactly? I'm not seeing much of a slippery slope here.
    • bjt 12y ago
      Copyright exists to incentivize creativity. The fact that we're arguing about this proves that there's at least one photographer that would be disincentivized by your proposed rule. This also happens more than you might think. See the video of a lion stealing a wildlife photographer's Go Pro video camera, for example (http://gizmodo.com/5805961/lion-steals-and-chomps-on-gopro-while-filming http://gizmodo.com/5805961/lion-steals-and-chomps-on-gopro-w...). If wildlife photographers know that they can keep copyright in such situations, that will incentivize wildlife photography generally (at the margin), and these kinds of pictures/videos specifically. The world will be that much more awesome. I see no reason why "letting a monkey play with my camera" should be less of a creative act by a photographer than "clicking the shutter button". Artists have done much weirder things. It's very common in wildlife photography to have a pressure pad that triggers the shutter. See http://macrocam.blogspot.com/2013/09/remote-shutter-release.html http://macrocam.blogspot.com/2013/09/remote-shutter-release.... for example. Are those pictures not worthy of copyright because an animal pushed the button? A rule based on incentivizing photographers will give Slater the copyright here. Whereas a rule based on the hair splitting advocated by Wikipedia would cast doubt on the copyrightability of all kinds of creativity that rely on an element of randomness or non-human actors (e.g. animals, the wind, sunlight, /dev/urandom).
• huherto 12y ago
  Since the Monkey cannot hold the Copyright. Lets suppose you drop your Camera and at that moment you get a great photograph. It was mere an accident, but how can somebody argue that you don't own the copyright ?
• argumentum 12y ago
  As an aside, what an unsettlingly photogenic animal this is, particularly its piercing eyes and expressive face. At first, I did not actually believe this was a real animal, and thought it was animated or from the planet of the apes .. then I googled the species (crested black macaque). Though I totally agree with Wikipedia's stance, and am not a supporter of IP in general, it's an amazing picture, and its no wonder the photographer in question is attempting to claim it.
• ChrisNorstrom 12y ago
  This is just ridiculous. Animal rights ideology taken to an extreme. ● The photographer owns the camera and placed it there. ● The photographer set up the shot. ● The majority of the work was done by the photographer. ● An animal cannot own intellectual property, or copyrights because it doesn't have the intelligence to understand what those are. ● An animal cannot administer copyright permissions. The absurd notion that copyrights can belong to animals are no different than the absurd idea that a human can "marry" an animal or a tree. An animal cannot legally take part in a practice which it does not comprehend.
  • x1798DE 12y ago
    No one is (or at least should be) suggesting that the animal owns the copyright. Animals can't own copyrights, so "creative" works produced by animals automatically enter the public domain.
• larvaetron 12y ago
  How exactly did Wikipedia confirm the photo was taken by a monkey?
• nextw33k 12y ago
  Whilst I am of the opinion that the original photo is not copyrighted because it was taken by a Monkey. I would have to question what is the actual photo being distributed? Is it the original work or was it a version that had been edited before being posted online? Can you take a public domain item, alter it and it then become a copyright? If I used it in a logo, does that logo become public domain? Personally I wish the photographer would use the work to promote himself rather than fighting for royalties.