If an animal steals your camera and takes a photo that subsequently becomes world-famous, there’s bad news: the US Copyright Office has ruled that the picture can’t be copyrighted - so anyone can use it for free.

That means that a row between the British photographer David Slater and Techdirt, a blog that focusses on copyright issues, over who - if anyone - owns the copyright to a “monkey selfie” is settled for now: it’s not Slater.

by Samuel Gibbs - The Guardian

If an animal steals your camera and takes a photo that subsequently becomes world-famous, there’s bad news: the US Copyright Office has ruled that the picture can’t be copyrighted - so anyone can use it for free.

That means that a row between the British photographer David Slater and Techdirt, a blog that focusses on copyright issues, over who - if anyone - owns the copyright to a “monkey selfie” is settled for now: it’s not Slater.

In new guidance the USCO has ruled that only works created by a human can be copyrighted under US law, which excludes photographs and artwork created by animals or by machines without human intervention.

The statement comes after Slater complained after first Techdirt and thenWikipedia refused to remove a photograph of a macaque which Slater said was taken by the monkey.

‘Will not register works produced by nature, animals, or plants’

“Because copyright law is limited to ‘original intellectual conceptions of the author,’ the Office will refuse to register a claim if it determines that a human being did not create the work,” said the US Copyright Office in its latest compendium of practices published Tuesday. “The Office will not register works produced by nature, animals, or plants.”

The compendium specifically highlights “a photograph taken by a monkey” as an example of something that cannot be copyrighted. Don’t hope for divine intervention either: “Likewise, the office cannot register a work purportedly created by divine or supernatural beings, although the office may register a work where the application or the deposit copy states that the work was inspired by a divine spirit.”

While there is some homogenisation and understanding under the Berne Convention in copyright law between countries, not all copyright law is the same across countries. In the UK, the law around animals producing copyrightable works is similar to the US. READ MORE