A US federal judge has (unsurprisingly) found that a Celebes
crested macaque monkey cannot be the copyright owner of a series of
"selfie" photographs created in Sulawesi, Indonesia.
Where was the legal controversy?
Who was the photographer: Monkey v Man?
The monkey, identified as six-year-old "Naruto", took
the photographs using equipment belonging to nature photographer
David Slater. The People of the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA)
commenced a lawsuit in San Francisco in 2015 seeking a court order
to allow PETA to collect proceeds from the photos on behalf of
Naruto and to be distributed for the benefit of Naruto and other
macaques on the reserve in Indonesia.
The British photographer asserts that his company owns copyright
in the photographs, as the photographs came about due to his
engineering of the shots – Slater alleges he deliberately
left his camera set up on a tripod with the remote trigger
accessible to the monkeys in the likelihood of a photo
