The artist in this case hiked into a south-east asian jungle for the purpose of taking wildlife pictures, and spent days gaining the monkeys' trust in order to get close to them. Sounds more like the photographer defined a hell of a lot about the picture.

But not the composition of the picture, the timing of the shot, or what was in the shot.

The picture did not capture creative expression of the photographer.

I think you might be right from a technical, mechanical sense, but I think most of the objections from posters here are because of an impedance mismatch between the word of copyright law and the spirit of what it's intended to achieve.

The macaques were simply fooling around with a plaything and had no comprehension of what a selfie is; there is no artistic intent on their part. On the other hand, the photographer by his account appeared to go into this project with the specific intent of obtaining a monkey selfie. The concept, the subjects and their moods, lighting, shot settings, etc. were all his doing, and by any reasonable yardstick his work should be recognized as a form of artistry, just as how it is not exclusively the cinematographer, but the Director as well who is entitled to copyright on a film.

And yet we have people arguing in court that by the legal specifics of who owns copyright on photographs, this is purely the monkey's "work" (and winning).

You're presupposing two positions, while in practice there's three: there are plenty of people (indeed, including some judges who have previously ruled on this) that believe that the monkey is, of course, not entitled to copyright, but neither is the photographer, because of how stretched the notion of "the concept" etc is here, and how indirect the chain of causality is.

> how indirect the chain of causality is

A monkey didn't sneak into his hotel room and take a happy snap. He sought them out and spent days with them, and handed his equipment to them. That's not 'indirect causality'.

By your reasoning, if I was to put a camera in a tumble-dryer and let it snap photos while spinning, those photos would not be mine because whilst I set up the circumstances, the actual photos were not specifically composed by me.

Far too much emphasis is placed here on who pressed the physical button, and not who brought everything together.

> By your reasoning, if I was to put a camera in a tumble-dryer and let it snap photos while spinning, those photos would not be mine because whilst I set up the circumstances, the actual photos were not specifically composed by me.

I don't have a problem with that consequence. Copyright is supposed to reward creativity. I don't consider "photo made by putting camera into a tumble dryer" creative in any meaningful sense. I understand that a lot of modern performance art would probably be excluded with this approach - but I don't see it as a problem, either.

>The picture did not capture creative expression of the photographer.

That's extremely provincial and 19th century view of the matter.

In modern art all kinds of artists including photographers give creative control to random elements and processes.

It's the setup they built and the creative concept behind it that defines their artwork, not the details like "composition/timing" which they can leave to chance, others, etc. (Yes, in some works even "composition" and "subject matter captured" can be detail left to chance -- this is often the case in e.g. generational music and painting, where the artist just sets up the general framework).

Well, copyright is a 17th century legal concept, so I don't see why "extremely provincial and 19th century view" is necessarily wrong?

Artists are welcome to do all kinds of things, such as "given creative control to random elements and processes". But they shouldn't be surprised if copyright law doesn't fully apply to the result.

>Well, copyright is a 17th century legal concept, so I don't see why "extremely provincial and 19th century view" is necessarily wrong?

Because it was superseded by 20th and 21st century ones?

The principles and rationale underlying copyright were not superseded. The only things that changed are various technical details, like copyright terms, and applicability across borders.

So? Isn't the point of copyright to compensate artists for their work? I.e. It's to encourage artists to produce art. Ostensibly, we would like pictures of wildlife. If the artist went through all that trouble to take pictures of monkeys, and we don't give him rights for that, we'll just end up with fewer pictures of monkeys.

The purpose is "to promote the progress of science and the useful arts", the method is "by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries".

In this case, the Work was created by the monkey. Yes, the camera owner helped, but he doesn't meet the established criteria of the Author in existing copyright law. Nor does the monkey (works of nature are not copyrightable).

You can disagree with the law as it exists (I think terms should be drastically shorter, and in no case should copyright be extended retroactively), but it takes an act of Congress or the courts to change it.

I still don't see how securing the rights of works for animals helps promote the creation of those works, when they have no concept of intellectual property rights.

What about an artificial intelligence that creates music? Who owns the copyright then, the programmer or the AI?

I think this issue is actually secondary to the issue that somehow PETA was able to insert itself as having standing for representing this particular animal and not just the rights of animals in general - IIRC they claimed they had gone out and found the exact monkey (and done what, sought its opinion on the matter? Provided legal advice?).

Indeed, to sew in the name of a third person is not admittable as far as I know.

They didn't represent the animal, they defended a copyright infringement charge, if I'm not mistaken.

They made representations in court that they identified the specific monkey.

And I'm ... rather surprised ... that they were given anything more than "friend of the court" standing in this.

Well, conceivably that could happen in the case where you pick up a rock and change it's shape.