Websites and monkey selfies
Aug. 7th, 2014 10:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
practicalcatNothing of particular interest has happened lately, hence the lack of blogging. But we did release the new version of the UBC Copyright website that I've been working on since January (and the rest of the office was working on before January), so you should check it out and tell me how pretty and easy to use it is.
There's also a throw-down potentially about to go down over in the UK about whether or not a monkey's selfie is copyright of the photographer who had his camera stolen by the monkey or whether it's in the public domain.
The copyright holder of a photograph is generally owned by the person who takes the photo (so, technically, when you ask someone to take a picture of your family when you're on vacation and you post it to the 'net? Copyright violation! At least in Canada and the U.S. and, presumably, Britain), unless it's work-for-hire. But monkeys can't own copyright because us humans say they don't. So the counter-argument to the photographer's claim of "I'm a professional and I went there to take pictures of monkeys, it's mine, stop using it or pay me royalties" is "the monkey took the picture, but monkeys can't own copyright, therefore it's in the public domain and I can use it how I want".
Props to the monkey, though. Selfies are surprisingly hard to do without it turning into a blurry smear. Or maybe I'm just terrible with my cellphone camera...
There's also a throw-down potentially about to go down over in the UK about whether or not a monkey's selfie is copyright of the photographer who had his camera stolen by the monkey or whether it's in the public domain.
The copyright holder of a photograph is generally owned by the person who takes the photo (so, technically, when you ask someone to take a picture of your family when you're on vacation and you post it to the 'net? Copyright violation! At least in Canada and the U.S. and, presumably, Britain), unless it's work-for-hire. But monkeys can't own copyright because us humans say they don't. So the counter-argument to the photographer's claim of "I'm a professional and I went there to take pictures of monkeys, it's mine, stop using it or pay me royalties" is "the monkey took the picture, but monkeys can't own copyright, therefore it's in the public domain and I can use it how I want".
Props to the monkey, though. Selfies are surprisingly hard to do without it turning into a blurry smear. Or maybe I'm just terrible with my cellphone camera...
