The 1709 Blog: Monkey See, Monkey Do, Monkey get Copyright, too? By now it’s all over the twittersphere, the blogosphere and every other made-up sphere on this green and blue sphere.
The monkey that stole a photographer’s camera and got her pictures published in the Daily Mail. Copyright experts and dilettantes alike are going ape trying to analyze who owns the copyright in these images. Why? Because the Daily Mail put a copyright notice on two of the pictures in its article. Most of the analyses I’ve seen are Americans trying to sort it out under American law, which is typical, but not necessary the best approach here. Can We Subpoena The Monkey? Why The Monkey Self-Portraits Are Likely In The Public Domain. So our post concerning the takedown request from Caters News Agency over the monkey self-portraits has stirred up quite a lot of interest and discussion around the globe.
I wanted to revisit the issue a little more focused on the legal side, and why it seems quite likely that these images are very much in the public domain (which would also suggest that an actual takedown notice (rather than a simple request, as happened here) would represent copyfraud. First up, I've seen many people insisting that the camera owner gets the copyright on any photo taken with their camera. If you read the comments on various other news stories that have covered this, people say this so confidently. They're almost certainly wrong. There may be some exceptional cases where that's true, but for the most part it's not true. Can the monkeys get the copyright?
That seems pretty cut and dried. But that's all under US law. Under Indonesian copyright law an author is a person or some persons. A Statement from the Monkey. Monkey feel vindicated that U.S.
Copyright Office rule Bad Man ineligible to claim Monkey Selfie as intellectual property. Monkey advised by counsel not to comment while issue being adjudicated, but now that ruling has been issued Monkey grateful to be able to speak out for first time, and perhaps provide valuable context. When Monkey snatch camera from Bad Man and run hooting into tall grass, Monkey see it as liberating act of self-expression, and, yes, perhaps even blow against human cultural hegemony. “Nobody” Can’t Hold a Copyright, Which Means Sometimes, Nobody Holds a Copyright. So, thanks to Wikimedia’s recent publication of its transparency report, the monkey selfie is back in the news.
Some background: in 2011, a British photographer traveling in Indonesia had his camera stolen by a macaque. It took a number of photos of varying quality, including this great little self-portrait. Monkey Selfie Crying Wolf. You may recall the strange affair of the monkey selfie, which resurfaced this past summer with the release of Wikimedia’s transparency report.
A little after that story became news, I wrote a blog post to make a point about the photo’s authorship, and something people were getting wrong in their analysis. Of course, we used the photo in the blog post. Yesterday, we received this email: This is the response we sent earlier today: From: Sherwin Siy <ssiy@publicknowledge.org> Date: Thu, Dec 11, 2014 at 11:13 AM Subject: Re: Infringement notice To: David Slater. LSAT Question: If a Monkey Takes a Picture Who owns the Copyrights? By Tony Guo Professional photographer David Slater went to Indonesia for a nature shoot.
He left his expensive camera unguarded and a monkey took it. The monkey shoot a few amusing pictures which caught the attention of online blog Techdirt. Techdirt thought the pictures were funny and posted them online without consulting David Slater or the monkey. David Slater asked for the pictures to be taken off Techdirt. This could easily be a new LSAT question for potential law students. A. B. C. D. Is This Face Subject to Copyright? There’s been a lot of chatter on the internet lately about the above picture.
For the uninitiated, this is a picture of an Indonesian macaque monkey. “What’s the big deal,” you may be asking yourself, “it’s just a National Geographic looking picture of a monkey.” Tech Blog Receives Takedown Request Over Photos Monkey Took. Just as the monkey photography story was dying down, a new twist emerges: on Monday tech blog TechDirt received an email from Caters News, the agency representing wildlife photographer David Slater, whose camera was hijacked by a monkey and used to shoot a number of self-portraits.
The email requested that the blog remove the images: I have noticed you have used David Slater’s images on your website. However we are representing David Slater and syndicating these images on his behalf. [...] These images are being used without David’s or our permission, therefore can I ask you remove these images from your site immediately. Is copyright law making a monkey out of David Slater? - IP Whiteboard. Monkey Business: Can A Monkey License Its Copyrights To A News Agency? A year and a half ago, we wrote about a movie that was entirely filmed by chimpanzees, and wondered about who held the copyright on it.
Technically, in most cases, whoever makes the actual work gets the copyright. That is, if you hand your camera to a stranger to take your photo, technically that stranger holds the copyright on the photo, though no one ever enforces this. There were some different theories made in the comments about who actually holds the copyrights, but no clear agreement. Of course, the whole discussion was purely theoretical, because it wasn't like anyone was concerned about the copyright.