Monkey business

If somebody borrows your camera and makes a photo with it, does that make you the copyright holder because you own the camera? No, it does not. The copyright belongs to who made the picture, not who owns the camera. But what if the picture was made by a monkey, who grabbed your camera and started to make selfies with it? That means the monkey is the copyright owner, but because he’s not human, the photo is in the public domain. That is at least what Wikimedia thinks, so they refused the request of the camera owner to take down the selfies a monkey took with a camera it grabbed. An interesting case, and I think Wikimedia is right. Read the full story at The Verge.

Next to the legal part, there is also a moral part however. It’s clear that the photographer David Slater spent a lot of time and money to get the monkey pictures. The fact that some of them were made by the monkeys themselves doesn’t change that. Wikimedia is abusing the copyright laws to deprive him of payment for his efforts. Even if that might legally be right, it’s morally wrong.