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US Government Concludes that Monkey Selfie Cannot be Copyrighted

Chris Gampat
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08/22/2014
1 Min read

Last Updated on 08/22/2014 by Chris Gampat

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Image from the Wikimedia Commons

According to a report from Ars Technica, the US Copyright regulators are ruling on the side of Wikipedia that a selfie taken by a monkey cannot be copyrighted. The primate “borrowed” a camera from a photographer, who then tried to copyright the selfie image. Photographer David Slater tried to make the claim that the image was his, but in a stand for what could arguably be called animal rights, the US Copyright office decided that a photograph taken by a monkey is unprotected intellectual property.

With that said, the image remains part of the Wikimedia Commons and the delightful dopey monkey’s face can once again go viral all over the net.

So how did this all start? Well, when the image was added to the Commons, apparently Slater went after them. But according to the Telegraph, Wikimedia fought back and said that the monkey owns the selfie. We can only imagine lawyers in the room trying to say this with a straight face.

This brings up the question now: with dog and cat selfie apps out there, who is the owner of the image?

image monkey selfie slater us copyright wikimedia commons
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Chris Gampat is the Editor in Chief, Founder, and Publisher of the Phoblographer. He provides oversight to all of the daily tasks, including editorial, administrative, and advertising work. Chris's editorial work includes not only editing and scheduling articles but also writing them himself. He's the author of various product guides, educational pieces, product reviews, and interviews with photographers. He's fascinated by how photographers create, considering the fact that he's legally blind./ HIGHLIGHTS: Chris used to work in Men's lifestyle and tech. He's a veteran technology writer, editor, and reviewer with more than 15 years experience. He's also a Photographer that has had his share of bylines and viral projects like "Secret Order of the Slice." PAST BYLINES: Gear Patrol, PC Mag, Geek.com, Digital Photo Pro, Resource Magazine, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, IGN, PDN, and others. EXPERIENCE: Chris Gampat began working in tech and art journalism both in 2008. He started at PCMag, Magnum Photos, and Geek.com. He founded the Phoblographer in 2009 after working at places like PDN and Photography Bay. He left his day job as the Social Media Content Developer at B&H Photo in the early 2010s. Since then, he's evolved as a publisher using AI ethically, coming up with ethical ways to bring in affiliate income, and preaching the word of diversity in the photo industry. His background and work has spread to non-profits like American Photographic Arts where he's done work to get photographers various benefits. His skills are in SEO, app development, content planning, ethics management, photography, Wordpress, and other things. EDUCATION: Chris graduated Magna Cum Laude from Adelphi University with a degree in Communications in Journalism in 2009. Since then, he's learned and adapted to various things in the fields of social media, SEO, app development, e-commerce development, HTML, etc. FAVORITE SUBJECT TO PHOTOGRAPH: Chris enjoys creating conceptual work that makes people stare at his photos. But he doesn't get to do much of this because of the high demand of photography content. / BEST PHOTOGRAPHY TIP: Don't do it in post-production when you can do it in-camera.