U.S. Copyright Office Denies Monkeys Rights To Their Selfies,

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?