The decision of the United States Copyright Office on who owns a controversial monkey selfie is out, with the Office siding with Wikipedia over the photographer claiming ownership of the picture.
The picture was taken in 2011, when David Slater, a British nature photographer, was touring in Sulawesi, Indonesia to try to take a picture of a specific kind of monkey, the crested black macaque.
Slater said that he stayed with a group of the monkeys for days so that they would start to become comfortable with him around. When the monkeys began investigating his photography equipment, Slater had the idea of setting up a camera in such a way that the monkeys can take pictures of themselves. Slater placed his camera on a tripod and adjusted it, and waited for the monkeys to press the shutter button.
The monkeys did just that. While most of the pictures were misdirected and blurry, there were some that turned out great, with the most famous picture being one of a female monkey that was pictured smiling.
The picture appeared in publications all over the world as Slater's most famous picture. However, Wikimedia, the organization behind Wikipedia, began distributing the picture in its collection of images that are royalty free, stating that the picture is in the public domain. Slater contests this claim, stating that the distribution is affecting his income potential from the picture.
The Office published a draft update to the rules on the ownership of creative works, which is the first update made on them in over two decades. The changes explicitly say that the Office will only recognize works that are made by a human being.
The Office bans copyrights on works made by "nature, animals or plants," and also those "purportedly created by divine or supernatural beings."
The Office lists "a photograph taken by a monkey" as one of the examples under prohibited applications, which directly refers to the controversial monkey selfie.
The draft of the new rules will be reviewed until they come into full effect by around Dec. 15.
However, in the United Kingdom, the Copyright Designs and Patents Act of 1988 states that a photographer can claim the rights over a picture, even if it was not the person that pressed the shutter button, if the result was a product of their "intellectual creation." The law seems to be favoring Slater, but a case on the matter has never been the subject of a court trial, so the outcome of such a trial is uncertain.
