"Monkey Selfie" Erupts into Copyright Battle on Wikipedia

[Alterego-X]

I guess I don't understand the difference between a trademark and a copyright, then.

In simple terms, trademark is a "mark" of your "trade".

The golden arches in context of foodservice, the slogan "life's good" in context of selling electronics, a certain shade of magenta in context of telecommunications service, etc.

It doesn't claim that you have invented that mark, or even that you "own it", just that in certain contexts it has came to imply the presence of your service, and others using would mean maliciously misidentifying you as the provider.

I do feel for the potential lost revenue for this guy, if only because he did sink a lot of time and money into the trip that yielded the "selfie."

And he did author quite a lot of photographs on the trip, just as he planned. That he also stumbled onto the formation of a photograph doesn't have authorship, is an extra surprise compared to that.

Regarding lost profits, think of it this way: wherever the limits of copyright are, there will always be "lost profits". Sherlock Holmes just passed into Public Domain, so the Doyle estate is "losing" the profits that they would have if copyright would last 200 years. Artists are constantly "losing" the profits that they could have if they were allowed to ban Fair Use. As long as you are allowed to record the TV shows on blu-ray as you miss them, their creators are "losing" the profit of you having to pay them separately after they aired.


Artists can ALWAYS claim "hey, if copyrights were even wider, then I would have even more money which I am losing right now."

It's like saying that 50 year olds are "losing the money" that they would otherwise get if only they were considered to be beyond retirement age, or that the government is "losing the money" that they could get if everyone would pay a 50% income tax.

Maybe they do, hypothetically speaking, but that's not good enough reason to unquestioningly side with the hypothetical beneficiary of an imaginable change.

 

[Zeterai]

Honestly, he lost me twice. First, the whole.. Hitler/Stalin.. thing.. and then on the revelation that he's actually changed his story since the original photograph was released - drastically, in fact. A monkey grabbed his camera and hit the button while it was pointed at a good angle turned into painstaking effort to set up and blend in with the chimps so they would accept him enough that he could convince one to take a picture of itself.. that's more than a little suspect.

If he was really set to argue that it was just his camera and thus his photograph, and he (and his lawyer) thought it would stand up in court, there would have been no need to embellish his account to such a ludicrously silly degree. That he has felt it necessary to pile on extra details that seem to directly contradict his intention and prior statements as expressed in the earlier record seems to imply to me that the schmuck realized he had to try for more than just ownership of the equipment that was stolen.

Consider that, really. If I steal your phone and take some pictures with it, whose property is it? What if you let me take the phone, or just plain don't bother trying to get it back since you want to see what I'll do? Are those my photographs, even using your camera, or are they yours because it's your equipment? I created them, afterall, not you. If I suddenly become unable to hold the rights to these things, due to being transmogrified into some form of primate, they don't magically become yours; if nobody holds the copyright, they're public domain. That monkey took the shots, after stealing a camera - it can't hold copyrights, so it can be argued that, following this logic, they're public domain.


Realistically, he should have done this when it got popular. Or beforehand, really; demanding damages for it being shared publicly is ignoring that there would have been no revenue if it hadn't been shared publicly. What it boils down to is, if you're going to upload something online, make sure you have it under the proper copyright license first, so you don't have to argue it in court later.


© Zeterai, Aug 10th, 2014.

 

[Crazie_Guy]

I was on the guy's side until I read the story and learned that he's a nutjob.

 

[Therumancer]

I agree with the photographer, he might be an odd person, but he is the one who went out there, paid for all that equipment, and got the picture taken. As far as I'm concerned he's entitled to it.

That principle aside, there is the practicality of enforcing something like this now that it's leaked into the public domain. Even if the guy gets returns from the sources first responsible for the leak, it's not like you can fairly go after all the people who downloaded or shared the photo when they thought it was free.

What surprises me is that this is even an issue given how the laws are so heavily in favor of photographers, which is one of the reasons the Paparazzi can run around and be such a terror. Not to mention "life as art" photographers who run around taking snaps of homeless people being pathetic in ghettos (oftentimes at their worst and/or most nasty and pathetic) and then charge $100 or more a pop per ticket to see their collection. When that's been fought before (guys making tons of money off the plight of the homeless, which they pocket, despite claiming they are trying to help the issue through attention) the photographers have pretty much always won, for the same basic reasons they can terrorize celebrities on public property and the celebs can't claim the rights to the pictures usually (or even stop the sale/display, even when they aren't flattering).

Ah well, hopefully it gets sorted out and the photographer gets something out of this. Whether he's a good guy or not, he still put in a lot of work/resources just getting there and that should be rewarded.