Apparently a monkey who stole a photographer’s camera andtook a selfieis in the midst of a legal battle. Well, not the monkey, but the photographer whose camera it stole is
This is the photo in question. Its been added to Wikimedia as a royalty-free image. Mr. Slater is claiming copyright but Wikimedia is saying that since the monkey took the photo, it technically belongs to him and since non-humans can’t own copyrights, then the picture should be free. In his defense though, it does say Slater cropped and rotated the image, apparently the stupid monkey can’t be arsed to shoot himself straight
I want to say just give the copyright to the guy, I mean its like not like he’s taking food off the monkey’s plate, there’s no way the monkey can monetize it. Then again, he didn’t take the picture, so what if the camera was his? How hilarious would it be if they actually brought the monkey into court and made him explain himself?
If so many of the photos are blurry shots of the jungle floor, why are the selfies so perfectly framed and in focus and look like the monkey has a Facebook page?
Do we presume that Slater recovered the photos and published them, or did the monkey already have a publicist/agent ?
I wonder what would have happened if a human stole the camera and snapped some pics before the camera’s owner recovered the camera and published the pics.
Presumably this is one of those cases where if the monkey hadn’t taken any good pictures, there wouldn’t be a story. Because the photos of the actual monkey are good, there’s a story.
That said, I see your point that the story is quite odd.
The camera presumably has auto-focus, so as long as the monkey was holding the camera relatively still and/or there was enough light for a short exposure, the lack of blurriness is not surprising. As to the composition, Slater cropped and rotated the photos.
For example, what about the timer feature on consumer cameras, or web/security cameras? Can’t they argue that the camera took the picture with no human intervention, thereby invalidating copyright claims?
I’m not a lawyer, so I’ll leave it to them to parse the law, but ownership of copyright in this day and age has to be more complicated than the mechanical pushing of a button.
This is one of the most interesting applications of and questions about copyright law that I have ever run across. I think Wikimedia is wrong, but I also think they have what seems to be at the least interesting and perhaps even a compelling argument.
I hope the case generates some interest and we hear more about it.
Those are not good comparisons, in my view. Timers do not change the fact that it’s a human being making the decision about what to photo when. Security cameras are also placed with active decisions about what to record when.
Of course. Keep in mind that the view that “the monkey owns the copyright” is not the position of Wikimedia, it’s a dumb simplification by that article. Wikimedia’s view is that no one does. And it’s not really up to Wikimedia to justify why David Slater does not own the copyright, it’s up to Slater to justify why he does (and that the copyright exists at all). And I’m frankly unclear on why he thinks he does. Because he owns the camera? Copyright does not stem from ownership of a physical tool. Because copyrights magically spring into being whenever a photo is taken, and since he was the nearest human, it attached to him?
It’s entirely possible he has a clear view of why he should, and the article is simply as terrible at describing his view as it was at Wikimedia’s…
Those of you who think it’s clear that he owns or should own the copyright to these pictures, can you explain why you think so?
It said the monkey took pictures of its food, like many Facebook users do.
I never understood why people took pictures of their food. WHO CARES? But now I see that it’s another indication that man and monkey share common ancestry, so that explains it.
I live in NYC and frequently I’m passing tourists who ask me to take their photo.
I have frequently wondered what would be the case if, as I am taking their photo, something newsworthy happens nearby and I turn and take photos of that event. Would the photo be ‘mine’? What if the photo won a Pulitzer Prize? Who would receive the prize?
Suppose a photographer set up a device that would rotate a camera a random number of degrees, wait a random number of seconds, then take a photo. It would do this a number of times throughout the course of a day. The photographer then takes some of these photos and - without any significant modification of them - puts them on display in an art gallery. Does the photographer own the photos? Should she own them?
While monkeys are not mechanical devices, they aren’t human beings either. I think that if someone performed the above scenario they should own the copyrights on the resulting photos. Likewise, I believe if someone deliberately gave a monkey a camera in order to see what kinds of photos it might or might not take, they should own the copyrights on any resulting photos. It is their artistic intent to produce photographs using a particular method - a method which does not have any intervening agents to which copyrights could adhere. (A simpler example occurs whenever anybody uses the timer on a camera. I don’t think anyone would argue that using a timer prevents copyrights from existing.)
However, the photographer admits that the monkey stole the camera. In this case I believe that nobody owns the copyright. There was no intent to use the monkey as a means of producing photographs. It just happened. As a practical matter it may be impossible in some cases to prove intent or lack of intent, but in this case it seems clear that there was no such intent.
Disclaimer: I am neither a lawyer, a photographer, or a monkey.
I wonder this too, and is there a difference between these two scenarios:
[ol]
[li]You accidentally capture something noteworthy in the background[/li][li]You notice something happening, and start taking specific pictures of the event with the tourist’s camera.[/li][/ol]
But the problem is that the photo wasn’t just found by some surprise,
the photographer owned the camera, he took it to that place, on that day, to take photos,
and he got the camera back for the purpose of keeping ownership of the camera.
It may be that the principe is, that the monkey (nor amateur bystander pressing the button) cannot take the photographers copyright away.
If the monkey does something with a can of paint, with the paint not being setup by an artist, then there is monkeys copyright…
