Sorry monkeys: you can’t copyright your selfies

Nicole Kobie August 22, 2014

Monkeys can’t claim copyright – but nor can those who’ve had their cameras stolen by them.

Sorry monkeys: you can't copyright your selfies

That’s the latest ruling from the US Copyright Office, which has released a draft update to its rules and practices. The document affirms that photographs and other creative works aren’t subject to copyright if they were produced by animals, plants or other parts of nature – or by “divine or supernatural beings”.

The update follows a dispute between a British photographer and Wikipedia. David Slater has argued that a “selfie” taken with his camera by a monkey in Indonesia shouldn’t be listed on Wikipedia as free from copyright restrictions.

Although the monkey held the camera and pressed the shutter, Slater maintains that copyright ought to belong to him, as it was his equipment that was used, with settings he had chosen.

The new US copyright rules appear to allude directly to this case, using the example of “a photograph taken by a monkey” as a situation where copyright would not apply.

Slater told the BBC he’d lost £10,000 in potential income from the image being treated as public domain, but Wikipedia, in its first transparency report, argued that neither Slater nor the monkey held copyright. It’s unclear why the free encyclopaedia is pushing so hard to keep the image up, however – it’s not even the lead photo on the page for the Celebes crested macaque.

As one Wikipedian noted in the edit history: “This should be in an article about non-human art/copyright, not about the species. Suggesting ‘Monkey painting’ for lack of a better target.”

Slater told The Telegraph that some Wikipedia editors had been willing to remove the image, but others had put it back up. “I’ve told them it’s not public domain, they’ve got no right to say that its public domain. A monkey pressed the button, but I did all the setting up.”

UK copyright law differs from that of the US, and as The Telegraph points out, the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 allows a photographer to claim copyright for an image even if they didn’t physically take the photo, so long as the work is their “intellectual creation”.

However, Wikipedia is based in the US, so even if the image isn’t public domain in the UK, Slater may not be able to get it removed. As the Intellectual Property Office points out on its website: “Copyright material may have been put on the internet in other countries without infringing copyright there, but it could still be illegal to use, including downloading that material without permission in the UK.”