Monkey Selfie Belongs To The Public Domain

The selfie has certainly attracted a fair amount of attention in the past, and even in recent times, there was this particular monkey that snapped a selfie, leading to a particular debate as to who owned the rights to the image? After all, the selfie was snapped by photographer David Slater’s camera by the monkey itself, leading Slater to lay claim to the rights of the image, and he ought to be paid for the image’s use although Wikimedia, the party that claims that since the monkey was the one who took the selfie, Slater had no part to play in owning the copyright. Playing the role of Solomon, the US Copyright Office has declared that any image snapped by an animal is unable to be registered and copyrighted.

This means Wikimedia has emerged the victor in this particular case, and the now famous monkey selfie will be part of the public domain for everyone’s use. In line with this latest declaration, the Copyright Office has also gone ahead to update its regulations that mentions, “The Office will not register works produced by nature, animals or plants.”

Well, I guess that settles it – which means teaching that Labrador Retriever of yours to actually snap a selfie of itself using the timer function on your DSLR is no going to earn you any money through copyright.

Edwin Kee
Categories: Cellphones
Tags: monkey, selfie