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 ? 

Cat In His Window.

Well the warmer weather has almost reached Western New York. It's been unseasonably cold for April and May. My cat loves this window in the summer. So today's Pic A Day is my cat Buddy, chilling in front of his favorite window. As soon as the weather warms up a bit more I need to get out and get some photos.

Buddy chilling by his window.

The Boring Cat Pic

Here's a boring cat picture. Shot with a 16 - 55 mm lens. Cropped in Gimp, and then I adjusted the Brightness and Contrast a bit. When I brought the brightness up just by like 3 and contrast down by 2 it really made the black and white of his fur stand out.