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Monkey business!

Summary

8 August 2014

A row has been going on about just who owns the copyright on a rather unusual selfie. It's of a crested black macaque who took a snap of herself with a British photographer's camera in Indonesia. The photographer wants Wikipedia to remove the picture from its website - but the Wikimedia Foundation which owns the site won't do it because it says he doesn't own the copyright.

Report

There you are in the national park for a bit of wildlife photography when a monkey comes up to you camera, presses the shutter and takes a selfie like any other. That's what happened to British photographer David Slater when he went to Indonesia three years ago. The self-portrait of the crested black macaque went viral and websites like Wikipedia started using it without Mr Slater's permission. 

When he wanted it taken off the site though his request was refused because the Wikipedia Foundation which runs the site, said he didn't take the photo. Wikipedia has started removing links from EU search results under new 'right to be forgotten' rules, but Katherine Maher from the Wikimedia Foundation, which runs the website, says Mr Slater's doesn't qualify because he doesn't own the copyright of the image. Which begs the question, who does? And it's not the monkey... 

Katherine Maher from the Wikimedia Foundation:

Under US copyright law the copyright cannot be owned by a non-human in this case a monkey; sometimes it can be a machine. So what that means is as that because the monkey took the photo and the photographer, although it was his camera, didn't take that photo there's nobody who the copyright belongs to in this particular instance. It doesn't belong to the monkey, it doesn't belong to the photographer and in cases like that, images and other works fall into the public domain and so when something is in the public domain it can be used by anyone for any purposes.

Needless to say that's not what the photographer wanted to hear and he's done with monkeying about...

Photographer, David Slater:

You could look at like this – the monkey was my assistant and therefore I was the artist behind the image and I allowed my assistant to press the button. You know, this needs to be tested in a court of law.

So prepare for the lawyers to start going ape on this one.