Wikimedia's refusal to remove selfies shot by an endangered macaque using a nature photographer's camera has cost the photographer nearly $17,000 in income, claims the photographer who wants the copyright to claim future earnings.
But Wikimedia, the nonprofit behind Wikipedia, asserts the images the primate shot are public domain. Photographer David Slater insists the images are his and his alone.
Slater was in Indonesia photographing crested black macaques when one of the endangered primates swiped his camera and began taking hundreds of images. While many of the pictures are blurred and out of focus, several are high-fidelity self portraits of the grinning macaque.
"I made £2,000 [for that picture] in the first year after it was taken," said Slater. "After it went on Wikipedia all interest in buying it went. It's hard to put a figure on it but I reckon I've lost £10,000 or more in income. It's killing my business."
So far, Slater said he has amassed at least $16,835 in legal fees in his effort to stake his ownership over the macaque's selfies. Roughly one in every 100,000 images he snaps nets him enough income to continue working, Slater said.
Tomasz Kozlowski, who uploaded the macaque's selfies and blogs for Wikipedia, shared Wikimedia's position on the images. Neither Slater nor the macaque hold copyright on the pictures, according to Kozlowski and Wikimedia.
"To claim copyright, the photographer would have had to make substantial contributions to the final image, and even then, they'd only have copyright for those alterations, not the underlying image," stated Wikimedia. "This means that there was no one on whom to bestow copyright, so the image falls into the public domain."
The images only became famous because the macaque had taken them, Kozlowski asserts.
"There has been some confusion over who owns the copyright," said Kozlowski. "As Wikimedia is based in the U.S., we are guided by their law, which says that works that originate from a nonhuman source can't claim copyright. The work did not originate from Mr. Slater as by his own admission he did not take the picture, the monkey did. However, monkeys can't and don't own copyrights."
Slater stated he did all of the work necessary to make the macaque photos possible, which makes the images his.
"I became accepted as part of the troop, they touched me and groomed me ... so I thought they could take their own photograph," said Slater. "I set the camera up on a tripod, framed [the shot] up and got the exposure right ... and all you've got to do is give the monkey the button to press and lo and behold you got the picture."
While it was unclear if Slater was joking, he said a case could be made that the macaque was his assistant.
"In law, if I have an assistant then I still own the copyright," Slater said.
On another legal front, Wikimedia has found itself under threat from the EU's "right to be forgotten" ruling. It is protesting a request to delink to a Wikipedia article that was filed with Google under the law.
"You do not have a right to use the law to prevent Wikipedia editors from writing truthful information, nor do you have a right to use the law to prevent Google from publishing truthful information," says Jimmy Wales, one of Wikipedia's co-founders. He further adds that "Wikipedia can and should work hard to do a good job, just as Google can and should work hard to do a good job."
