Back in July 2011, WC posted this excellent selfie, taken by a Crested Black Macaque.1 You’ve probably encountered it on the Intertubes before.
Crested Black Macaque Self-Portrait
The image never fails to make WC smile. But now this Macaque’s photograph is at the center of a copyright fight. Who owns the image?
The camera owner’s story has changed over the years; originally, he claimed he set his camera down and the Macaque took a series of selfies before he could get the camera back. Now he’s talking about “set up” and post-processing. And claiming the image is his.
The camera owner’s fight is with Wikimedia, the folks who run Wikipedia. Wikimedia has taken the position that the image is in the public domain. Wikimedia points out that the camera owner didn’t take the photo; the Crested Black Macaque did. U.S. copyright law doesn’t allow animals to hold copyright. So Wikimedia claims it’s in the public domain. Wikimedia says,
To claim copyright, the photographer would have had to make substantial contributions to the final image, and even then, they’d only have copyright for those alterations, not the underlying image. This means that there was no one on whom to bestow copyright, so the image falls into the public domain.
No wonder the Macaque is grinning…
- WC recognizes that Macaques aren’t monkeys. But the pun in the title was irresistible. ↩
Wickersham's Conscience 
But if it isn’t a hominid or a hominoid, or a prosimian nor an anthropoid…. 😉
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WC,
I had to go check because non-human primates are a sort of hobby of mine (NOT because I’m trying to be a smart ass) …
According to Primate Info Net:
“Although they are monkeys, crested black macaques are sometimes wrongfully referred to as apes because of their extremely truncated tails (Groves 2001). Usually one of the best ways to differentiate between a monkey and an ape is to look for the presence of a tail, but this is difficult with crested black macaques because their short tails are difficult to see.”
IOW, it would have been hard for non-experts like you and me to make that distinction even if the monkey had taken a selfie of its @SS! (Or should that be “a smellfie”? … whatever the heck it’s called, it’d make an appropriate response to the nature photographer’s copyright claims.)
“Oook ook nyama nyama eeeheee post!” That’s Macaques for “Thanks for a great …” (unfortunately they don’t have a word for “post” since they don’t even have the internet yet) … also, because they don’t so much speak gratitude as show it by grooming each other, the literal translation of their “Thanks!” would be “Wow, do I LOVE picking lice out of your fur and eating them!!” …
But enough of my monkeying around. Have a grub-filled day!
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