Copyright goes to the photographer ... or monkey

 

I heard a rather interesting tidbit on one of NPR's media-on-media Sunday programs. (It was either On the Media or On Point, I forget.) Photographer David Slater was in North Sulawesi, Indonesia, when he either gave a camera to a black macaque monkey or the monkey stole it — I've read several different accounts. Slater ended up getting the camera back, but not before the monkey snapped off a number of accidental self-portraits, including one where the monkey is grinning like a mischievous little ... well, monkey.


The photos quickly went viral and a number of people started posting them on blogs and news feeds. About 8 minutes into the photos' 15 minutes of fame, someone involved with the photos started hounding bloggers who reposted the photo. The issue cited was copyright infringement. A number of sites have pulled the photos after being issued take-down letters. Not so fast, said the NPR guest.


Copyright law has an interesting rule: unless contracted otherwise, photograph copyrights automatically go back to the original photographer. So even if Bazooka Joe uses my camera to take a picture, Joe still retains the copyright to anything he took. So in the case of the monkey photos, the monkey is technically the copyright holder of the photos. But since animals can't enter into a contract or own copyright, there's an argument out there that the monkey images are now in the public domain. It's an interesting idea, and one that I like because it means I get to post the photos (for now at least). What do you think?