Can a monkey take a selfie?
Advertisement
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has filed a lawsuit against British photographer David Slater for profiting off of the monkey selfies of Naruto, a macaque monkey. As per CNET, Slater summons to contest Wikimedia, but the wiki-based project organization claims that Naurto, and not Slater, is the owner of the photo. The owner of the camera the monkey used to snap the photos, a wildlife photographer from England, David Slater, believes that the monkey was aware of his actions as he snapped the photos.
The U.S. Copyright Office has issued a document that says copyrights only apply to works produced by human beings.
“The act grants copyright to authors of original works, with no limit on species”, Kerr said. US law does not specifically state that a non-human cannot own a copyright. Slater claims that since the equipment was his, the rights to the photo belong to him.
If PETA wins it will be the second time an animal would have won rights in a human court.
The bigger question now is whether a monkey can hold a legal copyright to a selfie.
Slater published a book, Wildlife Personalities, that contained Naruto’s selfies but outlets including Wikipedia have distributed them.
Cheese! Naruto the macaque monkey.
PETA has on occasion pursued lawsuits that were widely viewed by other legal experts as offering little chance of success – for example, a 2011 lawsuit accusing the SeaWorld parks of keeping five killer whales in conditions that violate the U.S. Constitution’s ban on slavery.
PETA said it was taking legal action on Naruto’s behalf because he could not “due to inaccessibility and incapacity” and that the court had jurisdiction because the book was on sale in the US.
Advertisement
Joining PETA in the suit is Antje Engelhardt, a primatologist from Germany who has studied the Sulawesi macaques.
