Monkey’s Selfie Raises Knotty Copyright Issue

A British nature photographer in Indonesia had set up his camera to take pictures of crested black macaque monkeys. After briefly leaving his equipment, he returned to find that a monkey had taken its (or “his,” which some might argue is the issue in a nutshell) own picture. When the photo appeared on Wikimedia Commons, Wikipedia’s image site, the photographer asked Wikipedia to take it down. Wikipedia balked, arguing that the photographer didn’t own the rights. The photographer says yes he does, for among other reasons that he paid for the travel and camera equipment (about $12,000) and set up the camera for the picture. Now the photo “has gone even more viral among copyright lawyers than it did among normal people,” says Bloomberg writer Blake Brittain, and the case is unresolved.