Fourth Blog:

Legal/Ethical

Issues Research

Published on 25/10/2025 19:23

For my research towards writing about legal and ethical issues in photography i wanted to look at some of the more famous cases when it came to court cases and lawsuits based around photography, starting with looking at the Infamous “Monkey Selfie” Case. The Photo in question was “taken” by wildlife photographer David Slater in 2011 where he had tried to take close up photos of the monkeys but due to their shyness, he was unable to get his desired results, to which he then “ claims he then changed the camera settings and that one monkey in particular, was drawn to the reflection of the lens. The monkey then went on to take a few pictures.” (World Intellectual Property Organization, 2018). After selecting one of the photos in which the macaque was smiling into the lens, the photo gained popularity, which unfortunately led to Wikipedia uploaded the photo onto their website and instead of recognising it as slaters property, it was tagged as being part of the public domain In 2014 as slater did not take the image and monkeys cannot own copyright. Slater attempted to have Wikipedia remove the image however Wikipedia persisted and the image is still listed as Public domain material on their website. Further legal issue came from this photo a year later in 2015 when  People For The Ethical Treatement Of Animals (PETA) sued slater on behalf of the monkey (named Naruto in the court case) in the photo. PETA claimed that the selfie “ resulted from a series of purposeful and voluntary actions by Naruto, unaided by Mr. Slater, resulting in original works of authorship not by Mr. Slater, but by Naruto” (World Intellectual Property Organization, 2018), essentially claiming that all ownership should belong to Naruto however in 2016 the trial judge dismissed the case as “animals do not have standing in the court of law” (World Intellectual Property Organization, 2018). PETA did however appeal the dismissal and the case was settled with the exact terms of settlement being unknown but Lawyers of PETA have said that 25% of the earnings of that image from Slater have been given to the sanctuary where Naruto lives. This case is unique in the fact that wether it had been another person rather than a monkey, chances are the Likelihood of slater losing all ownership could have been a lot higher and chan cues are this case may have never even happened if it was another person taking the photo. Mostly this exposes not only one copyright issue you could encounter with this type of image but two spreaders issues; someone claiming you had no involvement so it belongs to no one, and someone else trying to give your ownership away.