The explanation of the US Copyright Office suggests that the claim of "selfie" places the primary, and essential, action of production with the animal. 2) (most important) The very specific nature of this situation does not undermine work for hire scenarios, nor does it photo traps used by wildlife photographers. It certainly may be litagated further in a court. If one reads deep into the thread, one will find repeated mention of this decision setting a dangerous legal precedent and/or simply seeming to violate the intention of the law, or be otherwise ridiculous.įirst, it does not set a precedent for two reasons 1) it is not a legal ruling (was not a court case, rather an internal decision on the part of the US Copyright Office as to the legitimacy of the copyright claim). Slater's takedown requests are justified? Let us know in the comments. The photographer's requests to have the photo removed from the website have been denied, and Wikimedia's editors' position on the matter is documented in a series of comments associated with the deletion request and a transparency report.Ĭopyright law states that works not originated by a human author can't support a copyright claim, and that 'a work owing its form to the forces of nature and lacking human authorship is not registrable.'ĭo you think Mr. Slater but rather the monkey, Wikimedia maintains that the copyright does not belong to the photographer. Since the photo in question wasn't taken by Mr. Slater has asked Wikimedia, the organization behind the Commons and Wikipedia, to take down the image and respect his copyright, but Wikimedia sees things differently. The resulting 'monkey selfie' did the rounds on the internet, bringing Slater a lot of press and the photo wound up in Wikimedia Commons, an online repository of free images. On a trip to Indonesia in 2011, one of the monkeys he was photographing grabbed his camera and proceeded to take hundreds of photos of itself. Nature photographer David Slater's photos of crested black macaques may look familiar. Rights to a well-circulated photo of a monkey have been called into question as a dispute between a UK-based photographer and Wikimedia has escalated. Likewise, the Office cannot register a work purportedly created by divine or supernatural beings, although the Office may register a work where the application or the deposit copy state that the work was inspired by a divine spirit.' To underscore the point, a list of examples in the same section of the document includes 'A photograph taken by a monkey.' The Copyright Office's 1,222-page document outlines administrative practices, and as reported by Ars Technica, states that 'The Office will not register works produced by nature, animals, or plants. According to the report, the 'selfie' captured by a black crested macaque on David Slater's camera cannot by copyrighted since it was created by an animal. Xmp.A report issued by the US Copyright Office takes Wikimedia's side in a debate between a nature photographer and the organization. Camera manufacturerĬreative program (biased toward depth of field) The timestamp is only as accurate as the clock in the camera, and it may be completely wrong. If the file has been modified from its original state, some details such as the timestamp may not fully reflect those of the original file. ![]() This file contains additional information such as Exif metadata which may have been added by the digital camera, scanner, or software program used to create or digitize it.
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