I must admit I had to read that headline twice to make
sense of it,
so here is the story, in
2011, British wildlife
photographer David Slater was traveling through the jungle in
Indonesian when a crested black macaque grabbed his camera and started snapping
selfies, somebody posted the images in Wikipedia Commons, meaning anybody could
use them for free, a legal battle ensued, with Slater claiming the images
belong to him, and Wikipedia countering that the images belong to the public
since they weren't created by a human,
enter the U.S. Copyright
Office who addresses the dispute in the latest draft of its “Compendium Of
U.S. Copyright Office Practices”, which was published on August 19,
the previous compendium stated clearly that “Materials produced solely by
nature, by plants, or by animals are not copyrightable.” the new 1,222-page
report makes their stance on animal artwork abundantly more clear
by referring specifically to photographs taken monkeys, “the Office
will refuse to register a claim if it determines that a human being did not
create the work.” so stop giving monkeys cameras if you want to keep the
copyright of your pictures, rather more worrying however was this statement in the same report,
·
The Office cannot
register a work purportedly created by divine or supernatural beings.
divine or supernatural beings,?
I sense a conspiracy theory coming on here, what does
the U.S. Copyright Office know that we do not?
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