A macaque monkey, whose selfies were used for free by a slew of media outlets, cannot maintain copyright control of the images taken by a wildlife photographer in Indonesia, so ruled a federal judge in San Francisco yesterday. PETA had filed the lawsuit over the 2011 photos, seeking to administer proceeds from their re-licensing to care for 6-year-old Naruto, the monkey in question. But the judge ruled that copyright protections have yet to be extended to animals, even though they legally could be in the future.
To add to the confusion, Wikipedia was sued for putting up the photo while they claimed it had no copyright protections and was available for free distribution.
Watch and listen to BBC News reporter Susana Mendonca talk to photographer David Slater about how the photo really came to be.
From BBC NEWS
British photographer, David Slater, says he owns the portraits taken when the monkey snatched his camera in Indonesia in 2011. Wikipedia believes that although the photos were taken on the photographer’s camera, he does not own the copyright because he did not take the photos. The Wikimedia Foundation spokeswoman, Katherine Maher, said that under US law no one owns the copyright.
Sorry monkey. Get your own camera and Instagram page please!
