Ride the Lightning

Who Owns a Monkey's Selfie? Do You Know?

August 11, 2014

I love oddball stories. Especially when I am trapped in Boston in between meetings of the Law Practice Division, the Cybersecurity Legal Task Force and serving in the House of Delegates. So I had to share a fun story because fun is scarce when you are confined to hotel conference rooms. Here is a wonderful monkey selfie. The first thing I noticed about this photo is the monkey takes much better selfies than I do. Clearly, this guy could give me remedial selfie education.

The "news" part of this story came about because a photographer does not own the copyright to selfies taken by a macaque monkey that picked up the photographer's unattended camera and began taking selfies. This is the assertion of Wikimedia in its first transparency report.

British nature photographer David Slater contends he owns the copyright to the photos taken during his three-day trip to the Indonesian forest in 2011, report the Telegraph and the Washington Post. Slater says the monkey that grabbed his camera apparently liked the sound of snapping photos and took hundreds of pictures, including the selfies.

The Wikimedia Commons website, which is distributing the photos for free, has refused Slater’s take down request.

Wikimedia Foundation’s chief communications officer Katherine Maher says that works originating from a nonhuman source aren’t covered by copyright unless a human makes substantial changes. “So what we found was that if the photographer doesn’t have copyright and the monkey doesn’t have copyright then there’s no one to bestow the copyright upon,” Maher said.

Personally, I am hoping for a monkey selfie website to add a smile to my days. And a selfie tutorial by my buddy in the photo. Here's looking at you kid!

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