4 ms·

Having taken the time to skim the rulebook (http://www.copyrightcompendium.com/ http://www.copyrightcompendium.com/), I'm noticing that a couple phrases keep co

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
Except the is no artistic expression in providing a camera.
- bunderbunder 12y ago
  I suspect you're arguing from how you understand the term "artistic expression", now how it's defined for the purposes of the relevant law. Law works like programming: Nouns need to be defined before they can be used, and the operant meaning is the one you get form a scrupulous and pedantic reading of that definition, regardless of what your intuition says about the matter.

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

Except the is no artistic expression in providing a camera.

bunderbunder 12y ago
I suspect you're arguing from how you understand the term "artistic expression", now how it's defined for the purposes of the relevant law. Law works like programming: Nouns need to be defined before they can be used, and the operant meaning is the one you get form a scrupulous and pedantic reading of that definition, regardless of what your intuition says about the matter.