Animal rights? Monkey selfie case may undo evolution of the Internet

Enlarge / The cover of the book at the center of a legal dispute about animal rights, copyright, and an open Internet. (credit: Blurb)

Going on two years now, an Indonesian macaque monkey named Naruto, represented by his self-appointed lawyers from the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, has been trying to claim ownership of the selfies he took of himself with a camera he swiped from a British nature photographer in the jungle of the Tangkoko reserve.

This issue is no laughing matter, regardless of how bizarre it seems.

Let’s assume PETA is correct—that copyrights can be granted to animals. After all, US copyright law grants ownership of images to those who snapped them. So why can’t that owner be a monkey? That’s PETA’s position—one that has been generally down-voted so far in court and across a broad swath of the Internet as being bananas.

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Ars Technica

Post Author: martin

Martin is an enthusiastic programmer, a webdeveloper and a young entrepreneur. He is intereted into computers for a long time. In the age of 10 he has programmed his first website and since then he has been working on web technologies until now. He is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of BriefNews.eu and PCHealthBoost.info Online Magazines. His colleagues appreciate him as a passionate workhorse, a fan of new technologies, an eternal optimist and a dreamer, but especially the soul of the team for whom he can do anything in the world.

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