About six years ago photographrapher David Slater was taking pictures of monkeys and got a monkey to take a selfie with his equipment. The case has been in and out of court over copyright issues because while it was Slater's equipment and he set up the situation some claim that it is the monkey who holds copyright over the image while others claim that no one at all has copyright over the image. A serious attempt is being made to use the case to push for copyright and other ownership rights for non-humans. The image is now being use to try to force the issue of non-human rights, using methods that might do a lot of damage along the way.
Ars Technica is about the only site to notice so far. They write that the case is no laughing matter. PETA's quest for animals to own property could end the web as we know it. Specifically this image has become relevant to the future of the WWW and the Internet because the strategy chosen involves first asserting that companies that supply tools for people to self-publish their own works can be held liable for the content posted or uploaded by third parties.
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People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and wildlife photographer David Slater have reached a settlement over the ownership of a photograph taken by an Indonesian macaque monkey named Naruto:
PETA; photographer David Slater; his company, Wildlife Personalities, Ltd.; and self-publishing platform Blurb, Inc., have reached a settlement of the "monkey selfie" litigation. As a part of the arrangement, Slater has agreed to donate 25 percent of any future revenue derived from using or selling the monkey selfies to charities that protect the habitat of Naruto and other crested macaques in Indonesia.
According to a joint statement, "PETA and David Slater agree that this case raises important, cutting-edge issues about expanding legal rights for nonhuman animals, a goal that they both support, and they will continue their respective work to achieve this goal."
General Counsel for PETA Jeff Kerr told the New York Times that he did not know how much money Slater made on the photos in the past, but also that PETA is glad Naruto will benefit from the images in the future.
A federal judge previously dismissed the case, but PETA appealed. PETA has dropped its appeal so the question of nonhuman ownership of "intellectual property" will not be answered by a higher court.
Also at Ars Technica.
Previously: Monkey Selfie Case May Undo Evolution of the Web
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Arik on Tuesday July 18 2017, @10:29PM (12 children)
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2, Troll) by frojack on Tuesday July 18 2017, @10:58PM
Yup, and their new constituency can't reject them. Nirvana of the leftists.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 18 2017, @11:34PM (9 children)
Human Rights apply to the state, it restricts what government can do to their citizens. Access to mental health treatment should be a human right, one that we should champion for individuals who think a monkey that steals someone's phone should own copyright but not be prosecuted for theft!
(Score: 2) by unauthorized on Wednesday July 19 2017, @01:41AM (6 children)
So, those two are incompatible? In that case do you propose we deny minors the ability to own copyright, or that they should be held legally liable in the same way adults are?
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Wednesday July 19 2017, @01:58AM (2 children)
Theft by a minor is still a crime - it's just handled differently than theft by an adult.
Presumably Monkey Prison would be somewhat different to a human adult prison (though possibly less than we might hope!)
(Score: 1) by unauthorized on Wednesday July 19 2017, @06:42AM (1 child)
You are missing the point. Children and adults bellow certain mental capacity are not held liable for their crimes because we deem people bellow certain level incapable of being legally responsible for themselves. A human being of monkey-level intelligence will not be prosecuted if they did the same things this monkey did.
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Wednesday July 19 2017, @08:10AM
My point was that we do recognise some rights and responsibilities in children - enough to allow them to hold copyright on their works. Children are still held somewhat liable for their crimes (hence, youth detention centres), though I agree with you that we don't consider them legally responsible in the same sense that we hold adults responsible. If we held children completely unresponsible, then we couldn't assign them copyright.
For the purposes of this conversation, let's ignore the ludicrous situation we have in the US where young teenagers are being tried as adults. Even worse, when an underage nude selfie can result in prosecution as an adult for producing child porn [chicagotribune.com] (so, is the person a child or adult? You can't have it both ways!)
Essentially, my position is that I don't think monkeys have the capacity to qualify for copyright or responsibility for crimes. However, if a monkey did have the capacity for one, we should assume that they also have the capacity for the other (albeit not to the degree as an adult human).
(Score: 2) by Arik on Wednesday July 19 2017, @03:09AM (2 children)
Monkey never age into full humanity.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by unauthorized on Wednesday July 19 2017, @06:46AM (1 child)
Neither do people with mental deficiencies. The same argument applies, should someone with a sufficiently severe brain injury be denied the right to hold copyright or should they be prosecuted for not obeying rules they are simply incapable of following?
(Score: 2) by Arik on Wednesday July 19 2017, @07:18AM
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday July 19 2017, @05:05AM (1 child)
No, human rights are universal. The reason you are forbidden to kill your neighbour is your neighbour's human right to live. I doubt you are the government.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1) by nekomata on Wednesday July 19 2017, @07:41PM
The goverment is the one prohibiting me from killing my neighbour (not even forbidding, but defining consequences of the action). So yes, it's still the goverment. If my goverment ceased to exist tomorrow there would be no penalty from them for killing my neighbour. Maybe his family would come for me or something but that's lynching, not human rights. Human rights apply to me because the goverment enforces them (again, via consequences). Their (the goverments) existence is the defining factor in this. (Please note I am not arguing against human rights (and maybe even not against killing your neighbour, but that's a more complicated topic. ;)))
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday July 19 2017, @03:55AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 18 2017, @10:32PM (1 child)
Oh shit. The fucking billionaires are going to use this incident to weasel out of paying taxes aren't they? The robots are employees who own themselves and earn zero income, right? Fuck.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 18 2017, @11:43PM
Now they need to pay them minimum wage. And we can tax them, or just follow the trail to who really gets the money.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bob_super on Tuesday July 18 2017, @10:33PM (12 children)
PETA has no standing to sue in behalf of the wild animal.
Case will be dismissed.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Ramze on Tuesday July 18 2017, @10:38PM (10 children)
Beyond that, Copyright law explicitly states that anything created by animals or an act of God is not protected by copyright. It only applies to humans. The question is whether or not the human contributed significantly to the work. Some think not, so that means the photo can be used in the creative commons or any other medium indiscriminately because it isn't bound by copyright.
The real case is whether or not the photographer owns the copyright to the photo at all. This animal rights stuff is just fluff that'd be dismissed with prejudice.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 18 2017, @10:56PM (9 children)
> The real case is whether or not the photographer owns the copyright to the photo at all.
> This animal rights stuff is just fluff that'd be dismissed with prejudice.
Right, but on the way to that dismissal, there is a non-zero chance that the courts may find that sites become liable for content posted or uploaded by third parties. That could shut down many sites permanently even if is later overturned. So PETA seems not to give a shit about the means used to reach their goals, appearing not to care about collateral damage.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 18 2017, @11:13PM (5 children)
Collateral damage would include shuttering Twitter and Trump wouldn't allow that to happen.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by jmorris on Wednesday July 19 2017, @12:12AM (4 children)
This ain't happening via legislation or executive action, this is lawless courts. So unless Trump is really going to go "God Emperor" and start giving judges helicopter rides there won't be anything he can do.
But I don't think there are enough judges, even in the 9th Circus, to pull something like this off yet. The only way PETA has standing is if they argue the monkey isn't competent to represent itself, which means it can't hold a copyright. Unless the monkey can execute a power of attorney and convince a judge it knows what that is and did it of its own free will. To ignore all of that would be to expose the lawlessness that has been pervading the Judiciary for decades to such an extent the normies might notice, for little gain for The Narrative. Don't think they are ready to risk it. Almost certain the current SCOTUS configuration isn't.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 19 2017, @12:36AM (3 children)
I was thinking along similar lines, but my mind went to Andrew Jackson's comment about the unconstitutionality of the forced "resettlement" of Native Americans.
John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it. [google.com]
...and fuck Google.
I put in a text string AS A PHRASE in a VERBATIM search and it's the 16th "hit" before they find and highlight that string--unless I put it in -multiple- times.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 19 2017, @01:05AM (1 child)
On behalf of the Google team, thank you for your loyalty.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 19 2017, @01:27AM
Apparently, the Old Hands cash out and retire and the young whippersnappers that are hired to replace them never bother to see what the old code does before paving over that with their new whiz-bang hipster shit.
In particular, the syntax used for highlighting cached pages has been a victim of this, multiple times.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 19 2017, @02:50PM
I got better results with Ecosia and DuckDuckGo, though Google's results were decent. Didn't seem as bad as it was for you. But I did click your link first, so maybe the Oracle at Google already knew what I was after.
I haven't used Google for my day-to-day searches in well over a year or two now.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by khallow on Wednesday July 19 2017, @12:11AM (2 children)
That's because it's the court's job to make sane decisions. There will never be an end to dumb people exhorting the courts to make dumb decisions. It's a potential failure mode of the system that we have to live with and work around when it happens.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday July 19 2017, @01:49PM (1 child)
Yes, can't pin this on PETA, this isn't their insanity. Perhaps the sanest decision would be to abolish copyright. No more copyright means no more questions about whether monkeys can own photos. No one could own photos or paintings or any other art. Public libraries would finally be free to go fully digital, people could once and for all toss the bulky media out of their private libraries and cut way down on their collections, keeping only the rare stuff, knowing that the popular and common can always be downloaded again without having to worry about ridiculous accusations of theft, no need to travel to the library, twice, to check out and then return physical media.
However, the courts won't and can't do that. Takes legislative and executive action to repeal insane laws, and they won't act either. Need more public backing for a change of that sort, and there still isn't enough, not even after 40 years of copyright and intellectual property insanity. Copyright has a strong grip on the public because it speaks to our fear of loss. Psychological studies show that people will pass up a huge gain to avoid a small loss. Why, the results of this case could cause professional photographers to starve! They will LOSE their livelihoods! We will LOSE their services!
But, those losses have be balanced against other losses. A decision in the other direction could destroy the web, really? Would you rather lose the Internet or professional artists? If it ever comes to that choice, the Internet will win. The Internet just too amazingly, powerfully useful to be switched off for the sake of an unfair and downright mean business model. And professional art won't lose either, it will merely have to switch business models. That will make it clearer than ever that all this wailing over copyright was just so much hysteria. Meantime, people continue to exercise their natural rights to study and learn, and the law is powerless to stop that no matter what large corporate interests concoct for their puppets to enact.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday July 20 2017, @11:01AM
Actually, I disagree. Sure, it's not their fault, if the courts create or enforce bad law as a consequence. But they initiated the court case and various innocent parties are having to spend money to defend themselves as a result. At the least, PETA should be covering the cost of the cases and their appeals, possible with some modest punitive multiplier for wasting so many peoples' time and money with this case.
Nor do I agree that the current craziness of the PETA lawsuits has anything to do with the flaws of copyright. They're grandstanding for donations.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 19 2017, @01:57AM
PETA, long the naked-parading evolution monkey liberal 'nazi feminists' are showing their true colors - to destroy all freedom.
I love animals, they look great right next to potatoes and gravy.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Geezer on Tuesday July 18 2017, @10:34PM (12 children)
Corporations are already "persons" according to SCOTUS, so the concept of non-human entities having legal standing is already recognized. After monkeys, we will get bots, AI supercomputers, imaginary sky gods, and comic book superheroes.
(Score: 4, Touché) by bob_super on Tuesday July 18 2017, @11:11PM (1 child)
> imaginary sky gods
I only believe in real underground gods, you insensitive clod!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 18 2017, @11:27PM
CROM!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 18 2017, @11:51PM (5 children)
Not so fast. Corporations have standing to be sued, and to pursue legal action on their own behalf. They are created by deliberate action, and can enter into contracts.
None of the above applies to chimps.
Moreover, there's no indication that the chimp in question had any idea that it was creating a photograph, and consequently the idea of artistic creation is a fraught one at best.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 19 2017, @12:06AM
there's no indication that the chimp in question had any idea that it was creating...
I've seen movies and magazine articles made by humans where I would have sworn that was the case.
...and that goes for some S/N comments and submissions as well.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 19 2017, @12:17AM
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by maxwell demon on Wednesday July 19 2017, @05:35AM (2 children)
Very good point. If you run into a red-light camera, you are arguably are making a selfie, as it is you who triggered the camera. Are you therefore the copyright owner of the photo? I strongly doubt so.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Wednesday July 19 2017, @08:13AM (1 child)
There's some mileage in that idea (pun not intended), but a monkey holding a camera has more control over image composition, as well as timing. Your red-light camera is attached to a pole, with a fixed view.
(Score: 3, Touché) by deimtee on Wednesday July 19 2017, @03:49PM
It may be a fixed view, but they explicitly argue that you are responsible for the composition of your car and a red light in the same photo.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by jelizondo on Wednesday July 19 2017, @01:20AM (1 child)
Not exactly, corporations are a group of people, even if they sometimes behave like a bunch of monkeys.
Going from an individual human and its inherent rights(1) to granting those same rights to a group of people does not in any way, shape or form lead to granting the same rights to non-people.
A similar line of attack was used against slavery (see here [nytimes.com] and here [wikipedia.org] ) by granting rights to a slave, specifically the ‘habeas corpus’ right to a fugitive slave. (Habeas Corpus is the right you have, if held against your will, to be presented to a Judge or Court to determine if there are legal grounds for your detention.)
A similar tactic was used for two monkeys in New York (see here [nytimes.com]) in a similar case, the New York Supreme Court (see here [rt.com]) denied the ‘personhood’ of monkeys.
Black people are people, monkeys are not. It might be hard to swallow but interbreeding is not possible in the later case while it is in the former, so we can conclude that black people and other people of different skin color are still 'human' while no furry cousin of ours is.
So I don’t think PETA is going anywhere, except bankrupting a couple of people trying to defend themselves against a very ill-conceived tactic to grant animals rights.
(1) I get tired of his or hers, or his//hers, so its it is!
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 19 2017, @02:19AM
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday July 19 2017, @03:04PM (1 child)
Corporations are MADE of people. Animals are not.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by Geezer on Wednesday July 19 2017, @04:26PM
But people are made of animals.
Unless you're vegan.
So we need tofu rights as well.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 18 2017, @10:48PM (4 children)
Wait, so if I bend over and suck my own cock, who do I accuse of rape?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 18 2017, @11:06PM
ikanreed
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 18 2017, @11:22PM
No sir, you take your act on the road, you 15 inch cocksmith overly blessed by God!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 18 2017, @11:43PM
Not sure but you can probably get a job in some freaky sex shows in Mexico ...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 19 2017, @08:01PM
Nobody, because you're basically masturbating. You'd be doing it because you can!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by The Shire on Tuesday July 18 2017, @11:08PM (1 child)
If this monkey is granted the benefit of copyright law, then it must also be held accountable to obey all the laws of men in it's location. We can start by charging it with the theft of the camera. If the law applies to animals, then animals must abide by the law. When you apply this simple rule suddenly the case is revealed as the mockery it has always been.
(Score: 2) by TheLink on Wednesday July 19 2017, @07:18AM
Yeah. That's what a lot of the stupid "same rights for animals" activists ignore. If you are going to give all animals the same rights as humans, then they also have the responsibilities. They too have to be punished for depriving the other animals of their rights.
Lots of animals are murdering and eating each other. That includes most (all?) baleen whales - they eat krill, and other small animals.
I'd put up with going vegetarian if PETA and other similar idiots are willing to execute all those endangered carnivores for murder.
Good luck putting and keeping a bluewhale or bluefin tuna in prison on a _vegetarian_ diet without killing it:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-farmed-fish-are-taking-over-our-dinner-plates-1415984616 [wsj.com]
https://www.economist.com/news/asia/21707570-fish-farming-latest-slim-hope-japans-favourite-fish-breeding-bluefin [economist.com]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 18 2017, @11:55PM (2 children)
Ars Technica is about the only site to notice so far
No. You'll find coverage at TechRights, [google.com] especially in their quasi-daily news digest, which will reveal other coverage.
...and TechDirt has been all over this. [google.com]
They have even been using it as a meme.
N.B. Ars has an anti-FOSS contingent which makes me less trustful of that site's news coverage than other sites.
An M$-friendly slant that has been purchased is not a good thing IMO.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by canopic jug on Wednesday July 19 2017, @05:53AM (1 child)
Fair enough. Ars and many of the other news sites really have a noticeable anti-FOSS slant much of the time or at least have some dedicated M$-oriented staff with no FOSS-oriented staff to balance it out. That is even with FOSS holding a slight majority of the market these days.
Anyway, it seems I wrote a bad summary and should have excluded the first paragraph as it makes a distraction rather than provides background. PETA seems willing to try to break the web on the way to reach its goals. There are enough bad actors out there that would help them just that far for their own reasons.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 19 2017, @08:09AM
Not so much.
It's gotten lots of discussion going.
Keep plugging away at it.
The queue can always use more stuff and practice makes perfect.
...says the guy who has a big pile of rejected submissions.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 19 2017, @02:40AM (1 child)
The person claiming copyright isn't the animal's owner.
AFAIK, it's a wild animal. It could be said to belong to the property owner. That might be a government, which might have an unusual (zero or infinite) copyright term.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 19 2017, @03:04AM
The PURPOSE of intellectual rights is to incentivize people to CONTINUE to produce MORE creative things.
It's supposed to be a stipend until your NEXT magnum opus.
As has been mentioned upthread, the monkey didn't even KNOW it was being creative.
It's time for -less- of this intellectual rights crap.
It's gotten completely out of hand.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by arslan on Wednesday July 19 2017, @05:04AM
Considering the courts are in the U.S. and the Web is more than just that..
(Score: 2) by Bot on Wednesday July 19 2017, @08:22AM
"Never Let A Good Crisis Go To Waste" (Rahm Emanuel et al.)
Not to give lawyers more ideas, but: the photographer showed the monkey how to take selfies, i guess, so the monkey by imitating enrolled itself as a student: whom do the work of students during school belong to?
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday July 19 2017, @03:00PM
-Robert Heinlein [wikipedia.org]
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Wednesday July 19 2017, @03:37PM (2 children)
I say give the copyright to the monkey... as soon as the monkey asks for it.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 19 2017, @05:53PM (1 child)
While we are at it let's give copyright ownership to any elephant that paints a picture. And a cat gets copyright ownership of the "music" that came out of him walking over a piano. Is it copyright infringment to record a bird song?
How far do these rights extend? To all primates? Mammals? Vertebrates? All life? Then we need to decide if viruses can own copyright by determining if they are life or not.
Anyway, the chaos will be fun to watch. **munches popcorn**
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 19 2017, @07:30PM
If viruses could own copyright, would that make vaccination a form of piracy?