Monkey Should Get Rights to Famous Selfie, PETA Says

The office even clarified to the Daily Dot that, for some reason, it included the monkey example as “merely hypothetical”, despite there having recently just been a monkey-selfie controversy. When he came back, he saw the monkey snapping away.

PETA asked the court to declare Naruto the author and copyright owner of the photos, and to award the monkey damages.

Slater told Reuters he felt “rather bemused” and persecuted by the lawsuit, which he said seemed to be a publicity stunt.

“Our argument is simple: USA copyright law doesn’t prohibit an animal from owning a copyright, and since Naruto took the photo, he owns the copyright, as any human would”, the statement read.

Slater, a self-identified animal rights advocate, responded with dismay at the suit, saying he was “very saddened”.

This isn’t the first time someone’s tried to argue that animals are artists.

“I sincerely wish my five-year-old daughter to be able to be proud of her father and inherit my copyrights so that she can make my work into an asset and inheritance and go to university”, he wrote in his email. The case specifically wants to take the proceeds from Slater’s self-published book, Wildlife Personalities, and give them money to Naruto and his friends. Naruto’s orange-eyed, beaming selfie is its front cover.

PETA said it was bringing the legal action on the rare monkey’s behalf because he could not, “due to inaccessibility and incapacity”, and that the court had jurisdiction because of the book sales made in the United States. “Copyright requires original creative expression of a work”, Bridges said.

Last year, as the dispute simmered, Slater offered copies of a “monkey selfie” photo to purchasers willing to pay only for shipping and handling, and said he would donate $1.70 per order to a conservation project dedicated to protecting Sulawesi’s macaques.

Representatives of Blurb, which describes itself as a self-publishing and marketing platform, did not immediately reply to a similar request.