Pursuits
Monkey Selfies, Elephant Paintings, and the Future of Copyright Law
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Now we know: If a monkey snatches a camera and takes a photo of herself, the camera owner can’t copyright the resulting image. Neither can the monkey.
This isn’t an academic issue. Back in 2011, a fabulous-looking female crested black macaque in Indonesia swiped the camera of renowned wildlife photographer David Slater. The monkey snapped a selfie, and the image went viral. Slater tried to stop the Web service Wikimedia and others from posting the photo for free, because he wanted to sell it. Wikimedia refused, saying that for legal purposes no one owns a photo snapped by a monkey.