In 2011, when British photographer David J. Slater was visiting a park in Indonesia, his camera was taken away by a group of black monkeys. The result was hundreds of monkey selfies(自拍照). The best ones show a female monkey smiling toothily for the camera. Slater then sold the photos and they became popular on the Internet.
Nobody knew they would create a copyright battle some years later.
Last month, Wikimedia Commons put the monkey selfies online under a collection of free photos without Slater's permission. Slater asked the website to take them down since he owns the copyright.
However, Wikimedia Foundation-the organization behind Wikimedia Commons-refused Slater's request. They said that according to US copyright law, whoever pushes the button on the camera owns the copyright to the photo. It was the monkeys but not Slater that pushed the button. What's more, monkeys don't own copyright. "US copyright law says that works that come from a non-human source(血统)can't ask for copyright, " said Katherine Maher, Chief Communications Officer of Wikimedia.
Slater argues that the pictures belong to him as they were taken from his camera. He said he bought the cameras, he spent a lot of money to travel to Indonesia, and it was his carelessness that allowed the monkeys to take his cameras away. All these have made him the author of the picture, no matter who pushed the button. In a sense(在某种意义上), the monkeys could be regarded as his assistant, Slater said.
As of now(到目前为止), there has been no result in the Monkey Selfie case. Who do you think will win this interesting battle?
①Monkeys took some photos with Slater's camera.
②Wikimedia Commons put them online.
③Wikimedia Foundation refused to take the photos down.
④Slater asked the website to take them down.
