Posted on 08/23/2014 12:29:58 AM PDT by SWAMPSNIPER
In its updated 1,222-page “Compendium of U.S. Copyright Office Practices, Third Edition” released yesterday, the US Copyright Office took the side of Wikimedia in their argument with nature photographer David Slater when the office wrote that they cannot register works by monkeys.
(Excerpt) Read more at petapixel.com ...
pinglist
Looks like Michelle.
There is an entire school of wildlife photography where an automated camera is set up along a place where animals are known to pass, and the animal takes its own picture by setting off the camera. Would this fall under that category?
The US Copyright Office refusal to register the copyright is ridiculously wrong, and the nature photographer needs to sue Wikimedia and everyone else possible over this outrageous nonsense. People and corporations have been registering copyrights for works created or actuated by other persons and non-persons since the copyright was originated, so this example should be treated no differently.
Why not take this to its logical conclusion.
Photographs taken by mechanical devices such as cameras are not actually created by the photographer, rather they are created by the camera. So, accordingly, no photograph may be protected by copyright.
We have a government infested with fools and idiots.
I saw a movie last week. CAPTIVE WILD WOMAN.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captive_Wild_Woman
Googled it, went to Images. Would post what I saw but I might be given the heave ho if I do.
But that is not the logical conclusion. A photographer chooses the subject and composes the shot — an artistic act — using the camera and film (or digital storage) as a tool the same way artists in older media used charcoal pencils, brushes, paint,...
In this case there was no human agency involved at all: the monkey took the photo.
The fools and idiots are the copyright maximalists who are destroying the normal progress of culture with the insistence that every cultural artifact has to be owned by someone who can turn a profit on it. The normal state of culture is the public domain. Copyright is, or should be the exception — a state-granted monopoly existing for the purpose of promoting progress in science and the useful arts. Letting a photographer collect monopoly rents for a photograph a monkey took does not promote progress in science or the useful arts.
I routinely take photos where the mechanism is responsible for the precise details of the composition and the contents of the photo. Some of them are shot through telescopes, others are shot through timelapse techniques. Sometimes I set a self-timer, where the camera itself is responsible for choosing the exact time when it captures the photo. In many cases I use automatic exposure modes where the details of how the exposure are taken are chosen by an electronic brain.
I hardly see the difference between having what is in effect a robot shooting a photo and a monkey doing the same thing - in both cases the photographer set up the conditions that led to the shot being taken, but the actual agent responsible for capturing the image(s) was not human.
And I hardly see any difference between those cases when it comes to copyright protection and ownership of the images thus produced.
I agree with your sentiments. But given the current ruling, the photographer could just claim that it was he, after all, who took the picture (via a remote or something). There is nothing in the image that conclusively proves otherwise.
Let the monkey challenge him before the board!
Nonetheless, you set the parameters under which a program or device composes the shot, which you intend to take — your agency is involved. In the case in question, no intent of the photographer resulted in the photographs. The monkey came and played with the camera.
BULLSH!T
If you have an automatic camera system (snapping photos) you own the camera and the contents.
You even own a work shot at your direction by someone else’s hand with your camera (”can you take my picture, please”) unless they otherwise stipulate.
Wiki claimed that the monkey owned the image. The copyright office said monkeys don’t get to claim copyright.
And the posted photo was edited by the man’s hand. His image.
That seems like a weak argument, inasmuch as the photographer brought the camera to the scene, and evidently turned it on and otherwise set the parameters under which a program or device composed the shot. The monkey being the ultimate "agency" through which the photo was captured is indistinguishable from other motivating forces, unless you wish to argue for some special distinction between non-human "animal life" and other, non-human, "robotic life" actors, a distinction which goes well beyond what is in the Constitutional wording. There are plenty of other "accidental" photographs which arguably would be covered by copyright.
The copyright clause of the Constitution has long been expansively interpreted by courts in ways that go well beyond the narrow standard that you are trying to assert in your interpretation. So, ultimately the question can not be resolved conclusively absent the ruling of a competent court.
I love that picture. I posted an article about this when it first hit the news, and I’m glad that the Copyright office turned down the nature photog. This is obviously a precocious monkey. The photog should have been more careful with his equipment. The image now belongs to the ages!
Monkey 1; photog 0
The fact that commercial interests have suborned Congress and the courts to expand copyright in ways which not only do not serve its Constitutional purpose but in many cases harm that purpose (e.g. retroactive copyright extensions and rulings that suppress derivative works on behalf of a literary estate or publisher of a long-dead author), does not mean that that should continue. The Copyright Office got this one right.
I’d be careful with a “well the courts have decided...” argument here at FR. That argument doesn’t hold much weight here on abortion policy where a long string of decisions uphold the abominable status quo. Most posters here regard Wickard v. Filburn as having been wrongly decided. I’m not sure why you think it should hold weight in support of the expansion of copyright beyond the plain meaning of the Constitution.
The answer is a simple one.
The argument that you seem to be advancing is reminiscent of arguments by freedom haters to the effect that the Second Amendment should only apply to muskets since they were the commonly-used arms at the time of its drafting, or to arguments that claim that the First Amendment does not apply to writings published on the Internet because there was no such thing at the time of its inception. You likely don't believe in those two lines of argument. Why are you proffering a similar one here?
Not at all. I argued for photography as an art in one of my posts, and have no problem with copyrighting sound recordings, video footage, or computer code (though I do have a problem with patenting the last — it’s analogous to patenting a mathematical theorem).
The “applies only to muskets” argument is absurd, since the word used was “arms”, private ownership of cannon was permissible in the early days of the Republic, and there are writings of the Founding Fathers that argue that “all of the terrible instruments of the soldier” be available to the citizenry.
There is no such indication of the Founders’ intent that the Congressional authority in Article I, Section 8, Clause 8, meant to allow any of the sort of expansion of copyright and patent we have seen since the late 19th century when state-granted monopolies were reified as “intellectual property”. In fact, the history of copyright and patent law in Britain which is implicitly referenced involved the limitation of letters patent to actual inventors and of copyright to authors (from publishers), and indicate the intent of the Founders to limit the granting of monopolies, not grant an expansive monopoly-granting power. The current state of copyright and patent law is corrupted by the same sort of Federal overreach as was created in other domains by the wrongly decided Wickard v. Filburn.
A Constitutional originalist cannot be a copyright maximalist, however much whatever guild-interest you are defending may make you wish it were so.
You are imputing thoughts or positions to me that go far beyond anything that I have stated or implied in this thread.
But feel free to debate yourself.
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