Monday saw an announcement on the lawsuit over who owns the copyright to photographs taken by a monkey before a federal appeals court.
Lawyers on both sides notified the court on August 4th that they were nearing a settlement and asked the judges to not rule.
The details of the deal are as follows:
- David Slater will donate 25% of any future revenue to charities dedicated to protecting crested macaques in Indonesia
As mentioned in our previous article, back in 2011, David Slater gave a crested black macaque his camera after spending long periods of time with the monkey, teaching it to become interested in his equipment. The monkey ended up taking two selfies.
Unfortunately at the time, Slater probably didn't think he'd be on the receiving end of a lawsuit from the monkey. The monkey and photographs in question were taken in 2011 as part of his project to raise awareness about the species, which is endangered. His intentions were always good, Slater says, he has been a conservation photographer for a very long time.
Now jumping to 2012, Slater was involved in the first legal dispute of many over the photos. In this dispute, Slater requested that Wikimedia Commons pay for his work or remove them, because they had uploaded them to the web as royalty free images. Wiki refused to do so, and claimed that Slater owned no copyright because the monkey was the one who pressed the shutter button, taking the photos himself. In 2014, Slater mentioned in an interview that he lost a huge amount of revenue as a result of this dispute.
Slater's photos have always been for the right reasons, his intentions were good, he supports the raising of awareness for endangered species, but it seems an organization that should be on his side has overlooked Slater's intention through the distribution and sale of these photographs, and might be taking this a little too far.
The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.
