Techdirt: Thought the monkey selfie saga was over? I'm beginning to think that it will never, ever, be over. If you're unfamliar with the story, there are too many twists and turns to recount here, but just go down the rabbit hole (monkey hole?) of our monkey selfie tag. Last we'd heard, PETA and photographer David Slater were trying to settle PETA's totally insane lawsuit -- but were trying to do so in an immensely troubling way, where the initial district court ruling saying, clearly, that monkeys don't get a copyright would get deleted. Not everyone was comfortable with this settlement and some concerns have been brought before the court. As of writing this, the court seems to be sitting on the matter.
2 comments:
I like the tag on this article – “from the this-will-never-end dept”. I can’t say I disagree. Wikipedia has changed a lot over the years, but I’m pretty sure that it is open source – in a sense. While I’m sure there are fact checkers, the posting of articles and information isn’t limited to those within the Wiki company. In that case, I’m not sure who would be sued or what gain would come from it. The fact that Slater is considering suing Wikipedia seems absurd to me. I’d put it on the same par as suing The Onion. While you could, I’m not sure there would be any point. This case should go away. I guess Slater is a freelancer otherwise he might not have a claim to the copyright – it would belong to whatever company he worked for. Of all the articles I’ve read about this, I don’t remember ever reading about the position the zoo (or wherever the monkey’s home is) has taken in this case. Might they be the ones who hold the copyright since they are the monkey’s guardian?
Ah yes. The classic monkey selfie case. How could I be so stupid to think I could finish out the semester without it rearing it’s ugky head again? I feel like I’ve been commenting on this article ever since I started doing comments in the first place. But now we have an exciting new update! It’s no longer PETA, but the photographer himself who’s creating a lawsuit! Though I’m not sure to what degree he can be considered a photographer if the monkey took the picture himself. Anyway, I have to find myself almost entirely agreeing with the author of this article. Yes, it was unfortunate that Slater became the victim of PETA’s latest publicity stunt but that doesn’t mean he is justified in then suing someone else. All he is doing is prolonging a story that has already been talked about for far too long. You would think that at this point he would just want to put all of this behind him, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Perhaps he wants to spend his life as the monkey selfie guy. All I know is that I will be there to comment on his journey along the way.
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