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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 m

• 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...
  • rmc 12y ago
    He didn't just own the camera, he went out photographing them. He went to where the monkeys were.
  • amirmc 12y ago
    > "But in this case the monkey was also the director." The ape didn't really have any intent to direct. It was simply playing with an amusing object. I wonder what the situation would be like if this was a case of contact with an otherwise disconnected Amazon tribe. Would that individual have copyright? Would they even understand what that means? If they don't and their face ends up all over the internet as 'public domain' would they have any say about that? (I have no answers here, just idle thoughts). > "... he didn't have any agency in creation of the photograph except in owning the camera and failing to secure it." Once the ape took the camera and began taking pictures, Slater was astute enough not to get in the way. Thereby allowing the ape to take "hundreds of selfies". Despite that fact that "at first it scared the rest of them away but they soon came back" -- Overall, I don't think this is at all clear cut about who owns the copyright but deciding without due process seems wrong (the court of public opinion is rarely the correct place).
    • soperj 12y ago
      "The ape didn't really have any intent to direct" Neither did the the photographer in this case.
• welterde 12y ago
  > 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. That argument works just as well for camera rental companies. Because that's all he did in the end - lend the camera to a different kind of ape.
  • notahacker 12y ago
    David J Slater isn't a camera-rental company though: he's someone that earns a living from travelling to exotic locations and pointing his camera at wildlife in compelling situations and then processing the image before selling it as his creative output. The difference being, in this case, the wildlife participated a little more than usual in that creative process by pressing the shutter button. The situation is a lot more analogous to a celebrity inadvertently taking a selfie in a scuffle with a paparazzo; the celebrity is the intended object of interest and inadvertently triggers a composition far more interesting than the paparazzo's original concept, but the paparazzo was there with the intent of making a creative work. I'm not sure whether any sort of legal precedent exists for that, but I'd be surprised if legal arguments the paparazzo was too creatively uninvolved to have any say in the image distribution rights were positively received.
    • soperj 12y ago
      It probably wouldn't be as famous though if the monkey hadn't taken the image.
      • danieltillett 12y ago
        Exactly. The only reason the image is worth anything is the monkey took the photo. The owner of the photographic gear seems to be arguing both that it is his photo and not his photo.
        • tripzilch 12y ago
          Really? Because it's a pretty great picture just by itself, IMHO.
• jobu 12y ago
  It would be different if the photographer was using a timer, remote, or other sensor to take photographs of the monkey. In those cases the photographer would clearly be in control of the situation and the copyright. This seems a little different in that the camera was stolen from it's owner and pictures were taken. Right now the U.S. courts don't view monkeys as people (http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/09/us/new-york-chimps-personhood/ http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/09/us/new-york-chimps-personhood/), but what would happen if the monkey was someone's pet? Who owns the copyright on a picture taken from a stolen camera?
• qq66 12y ago
  The camera operator situation is totally different because it's a work-for-hire, in which no copyright can be claimed. The director is under the same work-for-hire contract, in fact.
• thu 12y ago
  What is "creating the circumstances" ? The airline company that made the trip possible ? The company building the camera ? The upset wife that sent her husband away (probably not relevant here) ? Would a burglar taken by surveillance camera be creating those circumstances ? Clearly he's not involved in the monkey taking the pictures. He has no right to them.
  • curiousgeorgio 12y ago
    > What is "creating the circumstances" ? I would define it as "exercising the most volition that leads to producing the outcome". Not sure how the law would actually define it. EDIT - Thought experiment: If a photographer spends days constructing all the elements of a shot (including subject, lighting, and camera settings), and, seeing that he/she is about to hit the shutter button, a passerby sneaks up behind the photographer and taps the button before the photographer, would the photo's copyright go to the passerby? What if the photographer had intended to wait a few more seconds before hitting the button? You could argue that the photographer had no intention to take the picture right at that (early) moment, but clearly (to me anyway), the photographer is still the author of the photo because he/she brought together all the elements - not because they simply hit the shutter release button.
    • JamesBarney 12y ago
      I think a more apt analogy what be if photographer inadvertently leaves a camera on the ground, and I use it to take selfies. Who owns the copyright to my selfies, me or the owner of the camera?
      • AimHere 12y ago
        You would. But the camera owner owns the equipment and all the physical materials your copyrighted work is embedded in, so he or she owns the only physical copy; you'd find it hard to make yourself rich with it without the photographer's permission. And of course, the act of taking the picture might conceivably constitute some other crime, such as criminal damage (if a film camera, you're rendering good film unusable) or computer misuse (if digital), so in general, this selfie-taking exercise would be even less of a smart move than usual.
• anigbrowl 12y ago
  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. It was accidental, though. he never planned for the monkey to take hold of the camera - as opposed to a camera set up to trigger when an object entered the focus area or broke an infrared beam (techniques employed for automatic photography of unpredictable or extremely fast-moving subjects). I do work in motion pictures; the director is also a hired hand in 99% of cases, whose job is to manage the actors and the other department keys - a COO, if you like. The actual copyright owners are the producers (or the production companies they work for) that hire the director.
• soneil 12y ago
  We can scratch out the hollywood argument because the employer/employee relationship with regards to copyright assignment is very well defined in law. My armchair-opinion would be that no-one owns the copyright. By his own version of events, the photographer imparted zero control, and zero creative input (in your timelapse, you at least point the camera). He didn't even encourage the primate - his greatest contribution was not interfering. And "I didn't do anything" is not a great argument for creative control.
  • curiousgeorgio 12y ago
    So, traveling to the location of the monkeys, bringing photography gear (that would otherwise not be there), putting batteries and a card in the camera, turning the camera on, setting the proper exposure in the camera, and intending to produce photos of monkeys... that amounts to "zero creative input"? The photographer did nearly everything here but press a button that makes an interesting sound (from the monkey's perspective).
    • Daishiman 12y ago
      None which has anything to do with the fact that if the monkey hadn't pressed the button we wouldn't even be having this discussion. The thick of the creative input here was made by the monkey. The photographer's input would be at best a minor contribution; the light settings and particular choice of gear add very little to the original content of the image, and the particular framing and circumstances were not purposely influenced by the photographer. If he had purposely allowed the monkey to take the gear to experiment with it then there would have been a creative intention that would have value, but as it stands it doesn't convince me much.
      • curiousgeorgio 12y ago
        > The photographer's input would be at best a minor contribution Alright - try taking a photo (shutter released by yourself or a monkey) of a monkey using a camera that (1) isn't present, (2) isn't on, (3) has no batteries, (4) is set to be completely under/over-exposed, (5) has the lens cap on, and (6) is nowhere near a monkey. Let us know how that turns out. The fact is, the photographer brought gear to monkeys with the intention to take photos of monkeys. A monkey saw a little box and figured out how to make a funny sound with the box. There are artists who "paint" with bacteria and other live organisms. The bacteria may be producing nearly 100% of the final image (the only reason the works are noteworthy), and in many cases, the result may not be entirely anticipated by the artist. That doesn't mean the bacteria owns the copyright. If the monkey had communicated in any way that it wanted to take a selfie (or if someone familiar with monkeys could tell that's what it was trying to do), then we could look at the monkey having "creative intention" as you say. Otherwise, either the photographer has the copyright or no one does.
• deleted 12y ago
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• bunderbunder 12y ago
  Having taken the time to skim the rulebook (http://www.copyrightcompendium.com/ http://www.copyrightcompendium.com/), I'm noticing that a couple phrases keep coming up. One is negative, repeating that "materials produced solely by nature, by plants, or by animals" (emphasis mine) are not copyrightable. The second is a bit more positive, indicating that as long as there's any "appreciable element of artistic expression" on the part of a human, that's enough to make the work copyrightable. To my non-lawyer eyes, it looks like one could mount a compelling argument that simply creating the conditions necessary for a monkey to take a selfie - even if only as a spur-of-the-moment kind of thing - would qualify as an "appreciable element of artistic expression" on the part of Mr. Slater, at least as far as the law is concerned. It seems like the sense of "appreciable" being used in the rules is somewhat akin to the sense of the word significant in the phrase "statistically significant".
  • loupgarou21 12y ago
    OK, in that case, what if I took my camera equipment to a park, got it all setup, and hid in the bushes, hoping someone would use my equipment, that I setup, to take a picture. You, seeing the camera equipment, become curious, and use the camera to take a picture of yourself. I created the conditions necessary for you to take a picture of yourself, but you took the picture. Who, in your non-lawyer eyes, owns the copyright to the picture? Does it make a difference if you're a human or a monkey in that decision?
    • bunderbunder 12y ago
      That one's rather different, since there are two human parties involved. I didn't see anything that would resolve that question in the reading, but I imagine there might be some legal precedent from prior cases that one could dig up. But where US law doesn't allow for copyright to be assigned to non-humans, bringing an additional human agent into the scenario creates a hypothetical that is non-analogous and therefore unnecessarily confusing. I think that a closer analogy would be if you were to set up a motion-activated camera trap in the park to take pictures of the local wildlife. In that case it would be fairly uncontroversial to say that you would get copyright to the pictures. Compared to that hypothetical, I think that as far as US law is concerned it could well be the case that the fact that for this photograph the action the monkey took to trigger the camera shutter involved actually coming into contact with the shutter release button is ultimately a distinction without a difference.
• chrismcb 12y ago
  You are correct, the monkey doesn't own the copyright because a monkey can't own a copyright. But the camera owner did not put any substantial effort into the shot so he also doesn't own the copyright. No one owns the copyright.
• ASneakyFox 12y ago
  Studio camera operators actually would be the ones creating the art.. its just that its work for hire so the copyright goes to their bosses. I don't think you can sign a work for hire contract with a monkey.
• StuffMaster 12y ago
  That's a decent counter-argument. Perhaps this subject needs to be fought out. Robots (with or without AI) may be taking photographs in the future...