Re: <nettime> Copyright for Apes. PETAs legal case.

[nettime's monkey lawyer <nettime-l@kein.org>]

On 2015-09-24 10:53, nettime's monkey lawyer wrote:
> 
> http://www.mediapeta.com/peta/PDF/Complaint.pdf

Monkey selfie case: judge rules animal cannot own his photo copyright

A San Francisco court said that while the protection of law could be
extended to animals, there was no indication that it was in the
Copyright Act

Associated Press

Thursday 7 January 2016 02.54 GMT

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/06/monkey-selfie-case-animal-photo-copyright

A federal judge in San Francisco has ruled that a macaque monkey who
took now-famous selfie photographs cannot be declared the copyright
owner of the photos.

U.S. district Judge William Orrick said in a tentative opinion
Wednesday that while Congress and the president can extend the
protection of law to animals as well as humans, there is no indication
that they did so in the Copyright Act.

The lawsuit filed last year by People for the Ethical Treatment of
Animals sought a court order allowing Peta to administer all proceeds
from the photos for the benefit of the monkey, which it identified as
six-year-old Naruto.

The photos were taken during a 2011 trip to Sulawesi, Indonesia, by
British nature photographer David Slater, who asked the court to
dismiss the case. He says the British copyright obtained for the
photos by his company, Wildlife Personalities Ltd., should be honored
worldwide.

However, the photos have been widely distributed elsewhere by outlets,
including Wikipedia, which contend that no one owns the copyright to
the images because they were taken by an animal, not a person.

Last year, the US Copyright Office issued an updated compendium of its
policies, including a section stipulating that it would register
copyrights only for works produced by human beings. It specified that
works produced by animals, whether a photo taken by a monkey or a
mural painted by an elephant, would not qualify.


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