Monkey selfie copyright dispute

Uncommon card · No. 98741

Between 2011 and 2018, a series of disputes took place about the copyright status of selfie photographs taken by Celebes crested macaques, using equipment belonging to British wildlife photographer David J. Slater. The disputes involved Wikimedia Commons and the blog Techdirt, which have hosted the images following their publication in newspapers in July 2011 over Slater's objections that he holds the copyright. Additionally, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) have argued that the copyright should be assigned to the macaque. Slater has argued that he has a valid copyright claim because he engineered the situation that resulted in the pictures by travelling to Indonesia, befriending a group of wild macaques, and setting up his camera equipment in such a way that a selfie photograph taken by one of the animals might come about. The Wikimedia Foundation's 2014 refusal to remove the pictures from its Wikimedia Commons image library was based on the understanding that copyright...

Read on Wikipedia · Image Self-portrait by the depicted Macaca nigra female. See article., Public domain