Court to rule if monkey owns copyright to selfie photos

[Guntrader]

It is the 9th circus court.
Nice to hear they are taking on important cases now.


http://www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2017/0 ... a_mon.html

SAN FRANCISCO -- A curious monkey with a toothy grin and a knack for pressing a camera button was back in the spotlight Wednesday as a federal appeals court heard arguments on whether an animal can hold a copyright to selfie photos.

A 45-minute hearing before a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco attracted crowds of law students and curious citizens who often burst into laughter. The federal judges also chuckled at times at the novelty of the case, which involves a monkey in another country that is unaware of the fuss.

Andrew Dhuey, attorney for British nature photographer David Slater, said "monkey see, monkey sue" is not good law under any federal act.

[usrifle]

I hope California just breaks off, floats away and attaches itself to Mexico.

[os2firefox]

Context for this photogenic bastard: an ape hijacks a camera from nature photographer and idiot David Slater and proceeds to take selfies of itself. The story/photo goes viral and various places upload the photos. Slater, instead of using the publicity to grow his business and reputation, doubles down filing copyright lawsuits. Courts decide that he doesn't own the copyrights since the ape took the pictures and non-human animals cannot have copyright protection. Slater goes broke and is considering waking dogs for income.

[WaJim]

Well monkeys are well known for emulating what they see....

So wtf are people that he sees daily doing????? Im amazed he didnt walk around his pen transfixed by the device held at belt level running into shit, kicking his food dish and maybe falling into his water feature......

Well, Maybe he did.

Is he on FB?

[snozzberries]

I think copyright needs to change. I think it should be shared between the person that takes the photo, and the person in the photo.

Think about it. If there exists a photo of you, it's hard to prove who took the photo. But it's easy to prove who's in the photo. Just look at the photo! Why wouldn't you, the person in the photo, own the photo of yourself? Why would somebody else get to control that image of you? If you don't want people publishing photos of you, you should be able to stop them.

So in this case, the guy didn't take the photo. The guy isn't in the photo. The monkey used the guys camera to take a photo of himself. I'm not sure if an animal can own the copyright to a photo, that's a whole ball of wax I'm not sure I want to talk about. But clearly the guy who owns the camera doesn't have the copyright.

[mislabeled]

Any discussion about copyright protection needs to go way behind photographs. What about recordings of whale song? Do the whales own it, or the people who recorded it? What about the elephants (and dogs, and whatever other animals) whose paintings and other self-created artwork are sold to help support their habitats? Who decides how that money is spent, the elephant or their human? I don't have any answers to these questions, but I hope the court is considering copyright protection in its entirety, rather than just a small snippet of it.

Once copyright ownership is extended to non-humans, is there even a defensible reason for not considering humans and non-humans equal under every other law, too? This puts a real nasty spin on hunting.

ETA: Will deer someday be able to get a tag for human season? There's a Gary Larson cartoon around here somewhere that addresses that, I'm just sure of it.

[AR15L]

IIRC there are some private and/or .gov buildings/structures that has a copyrights on them. i.e. you can not take a picture/video and then use them for your own profit.

If I can find what they are, I'll post them.

[mislabeled]

IIRC there are some private and/or .gov buildings/structures that has a copyrights on them. i.e. you can not take a picture/video and then use them for your own profit.

If I can find what they are, I'll post them.

This link -- http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/copyright-architectural-photos.html -- provides a reasonably good synopsis of how photographs of buildings might bump up against copyright laws. The cases are very few and I didn't see any special protection for .gov buildings that are publicly viewable.

[AR15L]

IIRC there are some private and/or .gov buildings/structures that has a copyrights on them. i.e. you can not take a picture/video and then use them for your own profit.

If I can find what they are, I'll post them.

This link -- http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/copyright-architectural-photos.html -- provides a reasonably good synopsis of how photographs of buildings might bump up against copyright laws. The cases are very few and I didn't see any special protection for .gov buildings that are publicly viewable.

Thank you, that's a good start.

[AR15L]

This sheds a little light.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_status_of_work_by_the_U.S._government

[STED9R]

Just the fact that this even went to court, shows a fucked up civilization.....

[Guns4Liberty]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AG2_dSHizvk

[Nate]

I think copyright needs to change. I think it should be shared between the person that takes the photo, and the person in the photo.

Think about it. If there exists a photo of you, it's hard to prove who took the photo. But it's easy to prove who's in the photo. Just look at the photo! Why wouldn't you, the person in the photo, own the photo of yourself? Why would somebody else get to control that image of you? If you don't want people publishing photos of you, you should be able to stop them.

So in this case, the guy didn't take the photo. The guy isn't in the photo. The monkey used the guys camera to take a photo of himself. I'm not sure if an animal can own the copyright to a photo, that's a whole ball of wax I'm not sure I want to talk about. But clearly the guy who owns the camera doesn't have the copyright.

Generally speaking, you can't publish photos of others without a release. Sometimes, payment in consideration. That's what gives you the rights to their image.

[danoh]

[MadPick]

Just the fact that this even went to court, shows a fucked up civilization.....

Well . . . I don't think so.

If I understand correctly, the "court to rule if monkey owns copyright" headline is just sensationalism. The real question is whether the camera owner owns the copyright to the photos (since the monkey took them, not him) and can prevent other people from using them. That doesn't sound like a ridiculous question to me.