
I am sure that British wildlife photographer David Slater rues the day that he ever laid eyes on Naruto, the Indonesian macaque, whose “monkey selfie” photo made Slater famous, but also brought him no end of grief and financial hardship. Readers will recall that it all started back in 2011 when Slater, a reputed wildlife photographer, set up his equipment with a view to photographing the goings on of a group of macaques in Sulawesi. The resultant photos, physically taken by one or more of the macaques after Slater set up the camera equipment having noted their interest in it, were promoted by Slater’s agent as the “monkey selfie”. It was a good marketing ploy, and for a time Slater earned some handsome royalties, but it was also an unfortunate choice of words because some users, notably Wikipedia, used the description of the photo as a “selfie” to deny Slater’s copyright and proclaim the work to be in the public domain on the grounds that Slater had not “taken” the photograph, as is generally required by US law for a photography copyright to be valid. Continue reading “The Monkey Selfie Case: Will It Have Broader Repercussions for AI and Copyright?”