Can A Monkey Have Copyright ?

I thought this was an interesting take on copyright and a legal battle against wiki commons over this image.

Cute little guy snapped a selfy and now there's a fight over who owns copyright.

Since I started my amateur photography hobby, I've become fascinated by copyright law. So many things I never thought about before, effect copyright. Whether you're an amateur or professional, so many factors have to be considered when profiting from a photo. For instance I never knew you needed property rights when photographing a building or property for that matter.

Then you have all the privacy issues involved in street photography, when you just randomly photograph a person on the street.  Anyway, I thought this was a cute story, and worthy of a post link here. I'm really curious to see which way the court leans. Frankly, I don't think wiki commons has a leg to stand on , but who knows.


Italic text taken from telegraph article.

Wikimedia, the US-based organisation behind Wikipedia, has refused a photographer’s repeated requests to remove one of his images which is used online without his permission, claiming that because a monkey pressed the shutter button it should own the copyright.

Full story here. 

Who do you think owns the copyright ?