Who Owns A Monkey's Selfie? No One Can, U.S. Says

August 22nd, 2014
"The question of who owns a striking image taken by a crested black macaque may be closer to being settled, as the U.S. Copyright Office says the photo can't be copyrighted — by the person who owns the camera or by any other entity — because it wasn't taken by a human."

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/08/22/342419651/who-owns-a-monkey-s-selfie-no-one-can-u-s-says?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20140822
August 22nd, 2014
Sooo, if I set up the auto trigger on my camera to shoot when something makes a sound or breaks a beam... I don't own that copyright either? I rather disagree with their ruling. :(
August 22nd, 2014
@grizzlysghost No. As the linked document states:

'...the Office will not register works produced by a machine or mere mechanical process that operates randomly or automatically without any creative input or intervention from a human author. Examples:

* Reducing or enlarging the size of a preexisting work of authorship.
* Making changes to a preexisting work of authorship that are dictated by manufacturing or materials requirements.
* Converting a work from analog to digital format, such as transferring a motion picture from VHS to DVD.
* Declicking or reducing the noise in a preexisting sound recording or converting a sound recording from monaural to stereo sound.
* Transposing a song from B major to C major.
* Medical imaging produced by x-rays, ultrasounds, magnetic resonance imaging, or other diagnostic equipment.
* A claim based on a mechanical weaving process that randomly produces irregular shapes in the fabric without any discernible pattern.'

(My emphasis)

If you set the camera up specifically to take the photo of whatever broke the beam or made a sound, then you still own the copyright.
August 23rd, 2014
According to one report that I have read, the photographer set up the camera and intentionally left it for the monkey to interact with. I think that you could argue that there was creative input and intervention from the human author if this is true.

@abirkill @grizzlysghost
August 23rd, 2014
@soren Camera settings would not typically be considered a creative input. For example, if you set your camera up, give it to me, and I take a photo, then you would have very little in the way of a meaningful legal claim to copyright ownership. You cannot copyright a method:

'How do I protect my idea?
Copyright does not protect ideas, concepts, systems, or methods of doing something. You may express your ideas in writing or drawings and claim copyright in your description, but be aware that copyright will not protect the idea itself as revealed in your written or artistic work.'

(From http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-protect.html )

If your settings were unique then you could *patent* them, but that's a different issue altogether (and, of course, wouldn't apply to any settings on any mass-market camera, due to prior art).

Of course, as with almost everything involving law, it's not a black and white issue. For example, if you set the camera up on a tripod, and by doing so creatively influence the composition of the work, then you would almost certainly have a claim to copyright ownership, even if I'm the one who actually presses the shutter release, provided I don't alter the composition or provide any other creative input. However, if I intentionally press the shutter release exactly as a bird flies through the shot, it's likely we would have joint copyright on the final photograph.

In this case, there seems to be no evidence to suggest that the owner of the camera had any creative input in the final photograph -- he did not control the actions of the monkey once it picked up the camera. Merely setting the camera up and wanting to claim copyright is roughly equivalent to mixing an artist's paints for them and then claiming copyright for their painting.

Edit: It can be helpful when thinking about this to remove the monkey from the equation altogether, as it really is irrelevant to the actual question. Replace the monkey in the scenario by you as another photographer, and ask yourself whether in that case, you or the camera owner would hold copyright of the selfie you took, just because the owner set the camera up and handed it to you. (Is it even possible to hand a camera to someone that isn't set up in some way?)

The only difference that the monkey makes is that a non-human cannot hold copyright. If you think that, had you been in the place of the monkey, it should have been your copyright, then you agree with the decision made here -- the monkey would have had the copyright if it was human, it's not, and copyright doesn't revert to the nearest human entity in that case.
August 23rd, 2014
@soren --- Ok, how about if you leave your throw away camera on the table, as is often done during wedding receptions, for others to use as they see fit. I guess none of those could be copyrighted due to not knowing who took what. Leaving a camera sitting for an animal to use is no different.
August 23rd, 2014
@dmortega although I agree that wedding guests can often resemble animals, your example is quite different as it is possible to prove who took the picture in question and because it was a person they would have a legal case for copyright.

@abirkill thanks for the reply, it is an interesting copyright case. Could he claim copyright for any post production work, say for example the image was captured RAW and the camera owner made all of the decisions on processing the RAW file. Sense no one holds the copyright on the original RAW image, would It be possible to argue creative input from that standpoint? In that scenario, the photographer in question is the only human to have a creative input in the image presented to the web.
August 23rd, 2014
@soren In theory, yes -- you can copyright a derivative work of a public domain piece, so if he made substantial changes to the photo that the monkey took, then he would likely be able to claim copyright on the modified work that he created. (The original would still be public domain, although if he never released it, that would be a moot point).

However, it would depend on whether the changes were considered a substantial (copyrightable) or trivial (non-copyrightable) change, and is again somewhat of a grey area. For example, if you fix one hundred typos in a public domain book, you can't claim copyright on the corrected version, but if you write a screenplay based on the book, then you can claim copyright on the screenplay.

What degree of manipulation is required to be done to a photograph to be considered non-trivial, and hence copyrighted, would be something for the lawyers to determine. My personal, completely uneducated, opinion, is that minor changes such as white balance correction, contrast/tonal adjustments, and even maybe an obvious crop, probably wouldn't give you copyright of the finished work, whereas compositing the image with another absolutely would give you copyright of the finished work. The crossover probably lies somewhere in between those two points (at what point does it start to be creative rather than mechnical editing?), but until such a case was tried I don't think it would be possible to say exactly where with any confidence.
August 24th, 2014
So, that Bigfoot selfie I have on my camera . . . ?
August 28th, 2014
What if it had been a loaded gun?
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