During a visit to the Indonesian island of Sulawesi back in 2011, a macaque monkey called Naruto grabbed a nature photographer’s camera and proceeded to take some now famous selfies.
Advertisement
That was tempting for the curious male black macaque who took the camera and began taking photographs – some of the forest floor, some of other macaques and several of himself one of which resulted in the now-famous “monkey selfie”. The monkey snapped the pictures when Slater left his camera unattended, the lawsuit, filed in San Francisco district court, stated.
PETA hope to use the proceeds to help Naruto and his contemporaries.
What are your views?
Wikipedia hosted the image, which quickly went viral, and refused to take it down, claiming that no-one owns rights to the photo as it was taken by an animal and not a human. While the claim of authorship by species other than homo sapiens may be novel, “authorship” under the Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. § 101 et seq., is sufficiently broad so as to permit the protections of the law to extend to any original work, including those created by Naruto. Peta disagrees; with lawyer Jeffrey Kerr stating that the law does not restrict registration to humans.
In his book, Slater wrote, “The recognition that animals have personality and should be granted rights to dignity and property would be a great thing”.
Between 4,000 to 6,000 live on the island, and PETA said their numbers have decreased by about 90 percent in the last 25 years, mostly due to human encroachment on their rainforest homes. However, he defended his rights to earn money from the photos.
“The lawsuit seeks to have Naruto declared the “author” and owner of his photograph”, PETA added.
PETA hopes to make history and set a legal precedent with the lawsuit.
Advertisement
He said: “PETA, an animal charity I have worked with in the past to protecting Wild Boar in the United Kingdom, are showing themselves to be more interested in themselves, selfie style, than the plight of animals in trouble”.
