The famous "Monkey Selfie," which is a photograph that went viral throughout the internet in the past year is now caught in a copyright battle between the photographer owning the camera, David J. Slater and the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) organization. The law suit filed by PETA against the photographer cites out that the photo taken by Naruto, a macaque monkey who stole the camer, should be copyrighted under the monkey's name and all proceeds should go to the monkey conservation. Slater disagrees, saying that copyright laws do not cover animals taking photos.
Slater fights to own the copyright protection of the said set of photographs, saying that it's all he's got, and the money from the copyright could get his daughter through college. He is saddened by the lawsuit filed, since he, himself is an animal conservationist. The photograph was taken when he was in Indonesia for a project involved taking photos of the endangered crested macaques. He left his camera in a tripod, unattended for a couple of minutes, which then attracted Naruto. The curious macaque grabbed the camera, and decided to start pressing the capture button with the lens pointing at its face. The set of photos which caught amusing images of the macaque's adorable face, Naruto, were published online; one photo went viral and was then known as the "monkey selfie."
PETA argued about the copyright policy in the U.S. as an opinion and that the U.S. Copyright Act itself does not contain language limiting copyrights to humans. "The act grants copyright to authors of original works, with no limit on species," Jeffrey Kerr, a lawyer with PETA argued. The copyright law is clear that it's not the person who owns the camera, instead it's the being who took the photo, he added.
For an object or material to fall under the copyright law protection of the U.S. it must meet three criteria, which are the following: a fixed tangible medium, in this case a photograph, the originality of the material, and an author. The authorship means that it is a work coming from a human being and those materials that are created by nature, plants or animals are not copyrightable. But the problem of the suit is, since the monkey cannot create a copyrightable work, that work can never be copyrightable. The "monkey selfie" then falls in public domain, which can be used by anyone, without permission, Danny Cevallos, CNN legal analyst, stated.
