Monkey Copyrights

[Khaldun]

This has been making the rounds today. http://animals.io9.com/who-owns-copyright-on-a-selfie-taken-by-a-monkey-1617161620

Wikimedia argues that the famous selfie by a monkey is actually the intellectual property of the monkey, and therefore it's public domain, because I guess they think intellectual property of non-humans is necessarily public domain. That last part doesn't make so much sense.

But at its core it is actually an awesome debate. I'm in sympathy with both the photographer AND Wikimedia on this one. I kind of hope it actually gets litigated in that one way or the other it could turn out to be a pretty significant precedent. What about robots that take pictures, for example? Especially if we had robots and drones that took pictures according to a generalized algorithm rather than specific instructions from a controller.

[Ingmar]

I think there may be some precedent that deals with this in terms of participatory art and/or music but I'm having trouble finding the thing I vaguely remember having read about it years ago. Helpful, I know, but this isn't totally without precedent and IIRC the copyright would belong to the human here. It was something to do with whether audience members in a participatory performance - a sing-along or someone called up on stage, etc. - could make claims about a recording of a composition or something along those lines, if anyone with access to actual legal databases wants to take a look.

[Evildrider]

But.. if someone stole your camera and you got it back, are those pictures considered your work?

[Lakov_Sanite]

But.. if someone stole your camera and you got it back, are those pictures considered your work?

They are not.

[Khaldun]

On the other hand, there is apparently actual legal precedent that says, "If you set a camera up with a remote trigger that people set off by walking in front of it or other cues, you own the images, not the people who triggered the camera."

[Paelos]

I am in full favor the monkey's rights.

[Lantyssa]

Ah, but by giving the monkey rights you declare it not to have any and thus can use the photo freely.

Lacking a legal actor I'd say it belongs to the owner of the camera, and thus the photographer.

[Cyrrex]

First of all, the picture itself is amazing.  

The discussion about who owns the IP to it might be interesting, but I would be a little curious to understand exactly where and how the photographer uploaded the thing.  If you post something, anything, on the internet for the sheer LULZ of it, and then come back later once you realize that you may have struck gold and are trying to monetize it, then go right ahead and fuck yourself.  As far as I am concerned, you can't pull that ship back into port.

Maybe that is not at all what happened, but that is the theory I am going with until it's proven otherwise.  And as such, I will now change my avatar.

Edit:  So there, fuck you photographer guy.  Come try and collect.  Unless of course it is determined that the monkey has the rights, in which case he can go shove a banana in his ass.

[Yegolev]

First copyright, then guns.

[IainC]

I would say that the rights lie with the person who gave the monkey the camera. Animals can't own anything in most legal frameworks. There's nothing that I can see which is fundamentally different from an ownership point of view between giving the monkey the camera to take a photograph and setting up some other random photo creation event using some kind of external mechanism that isn't explicitly controlled by you.

[apocrypha]

The core question is what is the point of copyright laws?

If they are to protect intellectual property so that people feel creating & sharing things is worth their while then you have to leave copyright in this instance with the photographer. Otherwise any similar situation that may arise in the future would cause anyone who knows about the law and this interpretation of it to decide not to share or release any potential artwork where the copyright could be disputed against them.

And that means less cool animal selfies for us all to marvel at and it means that copyright law would act to impoverish humanity rather than enrich it. Which would be stupid. 

[Lantyssa]

Shit, with that interpretation the rights lie with the monkey.

[Paelos]

Shit, with that interpretation the rights lie with the monkey.

AGREED!

[MrHat]

Shit, with that interpretation the rights lie with the monkey.

Leave him a camera, set up a gallery and let him sign it with monkey shit.

Art.

[Khaldun]

I really do find kind of hilarious the way Wikimedia is trying to split the difference here: the monkey is the author (hence assigning him the autonomous agency to decide to make a selfie) but he can't be the author (hence it's public domain). I'd really love to see a legal ruling calling the bluff of the first half and saying, "Ok, the agency to create original works is actually a distributed property, and non-human agents have some element or aspect of it, hence they can actually be owners of copyright." There's at least some evidence that primates create objects with aesthetic intent that aren't just instinctive, so it's not totally baseless. And we are certainly at the cusp of having machines whose algorithms are sufficiently indirect in how they govern the production of music, images, etc. that you could argue that they have independent agency in the creation of such work...

[IainC]

Doesn't matter if they are self aware enough or not. Animals and machines can't legally own things. Their output belongs to the entity that owns them or the entity currently controlling them.

[01101010]

But does the monkey have a flag?

[Lantyssa]

I really do find kind of hilarious the way Wikimedia is trying to split the difference here: the monkey is the author (hence assigning him the autonomous agency to decide to make a selfie) but he can't be the author (hence it's public domain).

Not too surprisingly Wikimedia is trying to choose the outcome which benefits itself the most, even if it requires a logical disconnect.

[Surlyboi]

Until the Apes rise...

Then next thing you know,  you're trying to disarm a chimpanzee...

[Paelos]

Until the Apes rise...

Then next thing you know,  you're trying to disarm a chimpanzee...

Soon...

[Samwise]

Here is my chain of reasoning on this.

If you accidentally drop your camera and it takes a cool picture, you own the copyright on that picture.  Even if you didn't take it intentionally, you own the camera, you made it possible, it's yours.  It's not significantly different from accidentally getting a cool photo because of a photobomb in the background, or because you just kept snapping until something cool happened, or you used a timer, or whatever.  Right?

So there's no such thing as a photo with no copyright on it.  A photo belongs to either the photographer or the owner of the camera, and maybe there's some wiggle room as to which one of them it is in some cases where someone stole/borrowed someone else's camera, but it's gotta be one of them; it's never going to be neither of them and therefore go automatically into the public domain.  Right?

So this photo has to belong to either the monkey or the human.  It can't belong to neither of them.  Right?

Neither the monkey nor the human has given permission for the photo be released into the public domain.  Right?

[Yegolev]

I like it.  Might draw up a flow chart.

[Paelos]

Somehow I get the feeling the monkey is getting screwed in this line of reasoning.

[Samwise]

Definitely not screwing the monkey.  What I'm saying is basically the same as what Khaldun said, which is that you can't have your public domain cake and eat it too. 

If the monkey owns the copyright, the monkey owns the copyright, and it's not public domain unless the monkey releases it.  If you're treating the monkey snapping the picture as an accident or act of God or whatever then the human owns the copyright, and it's not public domain unless the human releases it.

The notion of Wikimedia seeking the monkey's approval to use the photo is entertaining, though.

[SurfD]

What if you look at it from a different angle?

The current angle seems to be: Man has camera, Wild Monkey grabs camera and manages to take cool selfie.   The monkey made the selfie, the man owns the camera.  Pretty sure the picture should be intelectual property of the monkey (as he made it), but since monkeys can't legally own copyrights, this is where Wikimedia says it becomes public domain.

On a different angle: Man has canvas and a bunch of paint.  Wild Monkey grabs paint and makes "art" on canvas.  Pretty much the exact same thing is happening here, but I am pretty sure that a lot more people would side with the art being the work of, and therefore property of, the monkey (regardless of if they can leagally own it or not under current copyright laws).  Now, if the man owned the monkey, and specifically tried to get said event to occur, then you could argue that the work belongs to the Man, as he set it up.

Kind of makes you wonder: If some new age art major makes a shitty sculpture in a sculpture garden, and then a rock falls from the sky and "re-models" the sculpture into something awesome by accident, does the original artist still own the rights to the work, or does it become public domain?

[Cyrrex]

Taking those examples....imagine if instead of a monkey, it was a man. 

A man steals your camera, and imagine it is a polaroid camera with paper in it.  Takes a picture with your camera and prints.  You own the camera, you own the paper, and the dude basically took it an used it without your permission.  I doubt there are too many reasonable arguments that say the thief owns the rights to whatever was produced.  So why should it be different for a monkey?  Being an animal, his claim would be even weaker.

Same with the art scenario.  Your canvas, your paint, no permission given.  Good luck with that.

[SurfD]

RIght, but in both cases, you can claim ownership of the medium, but not ownership of what was created with / on it, as that was created by someone else.

If I steal paper from you, and write a book on it, do you own the rights to the book I wrote because you own the paper, or do I own the rights to the book because I am the author of the words ON the paper?

[Cyrrex]

It's a good point, and I see exactly where you are coming from....but we live in a world where ownership means everything, and the simple act of creating something using tools that do not legally belong to you means that you are going to get screwed, whether you deserve it or not.  The theft is going to outweigh the rights to the created product.  The legal wrangling is interesting, but I have a feeling that in the real world all your claims will be answered with "uh, nice book dude, but you totally stole that shit.  Sucks to be you.  Next time use your own paper".

So what I am saying is that the monkey needs to buy his own camera next time.

[Furiously]

I would argue a different line I think; The monkey is part of the park.  I believe there have been some elephant paintings that have sold for at least $25,000. Something like http://www.elephantart.com/catalog/

The park is the animal's guardian/steward, therefor they should own the work. Really, the park should be suing the guy for putting their "art" onto the Internets.

[Kail]

It's a good point, and I see exactly where you are coming from....but we live in a world where ownership means everything, and the simple act of creating something using tools that do not legally belong to you means that you are going to get screwed, whether you deserve it or not.  The theft is going to outweigh the rights to the created product.  The legal wrangling is interesting, but I have a feeling that in the real world all your claims will be answered with "uh, nice book dude, but you totally stole that shit.  Sucks to be you.  Next time use your own paper".

I don't think that's how it works, though.  If you have a cracked copy of Photoshop or something, Adobe doesn't have copyright over everything you make with it.  They'd own half the internet if that was true.  The issue of theft (of a book or a camera or whatever) is a different issue from the issue of copyright, they don't overlap as far as I know.  If you steal my paper and write a novel on it, I might still own the physical paper, but you'd still have the copyright for the novel because you wrote it, not me.  You can still get busted for theft, and I can get compensated for the mental trauma resulting from the loss of my paper, but I don't somehow get copyright credit for the stuff you wrote.  Copyright is awarded to the creator of a work, not the legal owners of the media used to secure it.

My limited understanding of copyright would suggest that it's less an issue of who legally owns the camera and more who created the work.  The photographer is arguing that giving the monkey the camera was a creative act, and Wikimedia was arguing that it was not (because the monkey took the picture without any direction or control from the photographer), and therefore the work has no legal copyright holder to enforce rights (I guess you could claim the monkey has copyright, but somehow I don't think he's going to take it to court).

[Maven]

I would think that the monkey lacking legal status would make the point moot, and support its ownership in the public domain (that is, there is no ownership as far as I'm concerned).

If my understanding is correct, someone has to be registered with the government to be able to enforce a copyright. Outside of that, we're arguing inherent / moral reasoning of copyright.

[Merusk]

You have copyright as soon as the work is created. You do not need to register to have a copyright, that just makes the process of defending it easier as you have it registered. Should someone come along later and steal it, or make the claim it's theirs you have a 3rd party and a date proving it's yours.

[Maven]

Right, I understand that -- but wouldn't the individual need legal recognition within the country ... or any country? I'm not thinking "Self as in living being" but "Self as in Legally Registered Entity".

Put another way ... would a corporation automatically own the copyright to work created by its employees? I would think so.

[palmer_eldritch]

Nobody's saying a monkey can own the copyright to anything.

The question is whether photographer David Slater owns the copyright or not. Plenty of photographers use clever automated systems to take photos, including devices such as tripwires (or "virtual" tripwires using infra-red beams) which are triggered by animals. I think it's generally accepted that the photographer owns the copyright to the images created, even if they were somewhere else at the time (sleeping in their tent, perhaps).

In this case there was no tripwire and the position of Wikimedia Commons seems to be that the photographer didn't contribute enough to the creation of this image to be able to claim the copyright. The only way to test that claim would be for Slater to take them to court.

But personally I think that when there is doubt about the copyright status of an image - and surely it's fair to say there is doubt in this case - a site like Wikimedia should be cautious and not decide to tell everyone it is in the public domain. If you look at the main pages for the monkey photos on Wikimedia Commons, it simply states that "This file is in the public domain, because as the work of a non-human animal, it has no human author in whom copyright is vested." There's no hint that this is disputed or is anything other than a statement of accepted fact.

It bothers me a bit that a site with the influence of Wikimedia Commons (influence when it comes to sourcing public domain photos) takes it on itself to tell visitors that a work is in the public domain when this is disputed by a photographer who believes he owns it, without even being willing to state on the file's main page that the status is disputed.

[Ingmar]

a site like Wikimedia should be cautious and not decide to tell everyone it is in the public domain.

That would require them to not be ideology-pushing true believer INFORMATION WANTS TO BE FREEEEEE fuckwads.