A macaque monkey who rose to fame for its selfies has been found by a federal judge to not be the rightful copyright owner of the photos, according to the Guardian.
U.S. District Judge William Orrick ruled Wednesday that "while Congress and the president can extend the protection of law to animals as well as humans, there is no indication that they did so in the Copyright Act," according to CBC News. In 2014, the U.S. Copyright Office said that works "produced by nature, animals or plants" cannot be granted copyright protection, according to the Telegraph.
The monkey came to public attention in 2011 when photographer David Slater claimed that it took the photos while the camera was left deliberately unattended in order to attract animals in Indonesia, according to USA Today. After organizations such as the Wikimedia Foundation classified the images as belonging to the public sphere, an argument about the copyright about the photos broke out, according to USA Today.
A lawsuit was filed on behalf of the monkey by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), who identified the creature as a 6-year-old male called Naruto and argued that he was the true copyright holder of the images, according to reports by NPR.
Slater obtained a British copyright for the photographs in 2011 and is adamant that it should be recognized worldwide, stating on his Facebook page that it is PETA and the media "who create the idea that there is somehow a loophole allowing them to use my images, oft citing the U.S. Copyright Office in their defense of willful infringement."
Slater also doubts the identity of the supposed "Naruto," referring to him as "a fraudulent 6-year-old male monkey falsely impersonating the one in my photos."
"I'm not the person to weigh into this. This is an issue for Congress and the president," Orrick told the courts, according to Ars Technica. "If they think animals should have the right of copyright, they're free, I think, under the Constitution, to do that."
