It's actually quite an interesting question. Remember the other day I wrote about the macaque monkeys (George Allen's favorite) who grabbed a professional photographer's camera and started snapping photos of themselves. Well, as TechDirt notes, it's not entirely clear how the photographer, or his photo agency. is now claiming the copyright on photos taken by someone, or some thing, else.
Technically, in most cases, whoever makes the actual work gets the copyright. That is, if you hand your camera to a stranger to take your photo, technically that stranger holds the copyright on the photo, though no one ever enforces this.
So here's the legal question: how did the copyright get assigned to Caters? I can't see how there's been a legal transfer. The monkeys were unlikely to have sold or licensed the work. I'm assuming that it's likely that the photographer, Slater, probably submitted the photos to the agency, and from a common sense view of things, that would make perfect sense. But from a letter-of-the-law view of things, Slater almost certainly does not hold the copyrights on those images, and has no legal right to then sell, license or assign them to Caters.You could try to argue that people who take photos of speeding bullets bursting balloons aren't really taking the photos - the contraption they set up is taking the photos when it senses the bullet passing. But the photographer set up the contraption, so there's a chain of custody you could use to argue that HE is really taking the photo. But with the monkey who stole the camera, there's no chain of custody - the photographer did not give the monkey the camera with the intent that the monkey snap photos like some kind of machine. Intent seems to be part of the issue here, if we're talking about non-humans snapping photos. Does it matter who owns the camera? If someone steals my camera, a person I mean, and they take photos with it, do they own the copyright to the photos from the stolen camera? Or if it's a monkey again, and I give him my camera in order to coax him to take photos, now do I own the copyright, because I intended the monkey to snap the shots? And doesn't the monkey's intent matter? Isn't this a bit like me dropping my camera accidentally and when it hits the floor it accidentally snaps a Pulitzer Prize winning photo - who gets the prize if the photo was never intended? Would it matter if I was passing the camera to a friend and we both had our hands on it when it dropped - would that mean both of us hold the copyright?
This is what I loved about my Property law class in law school. It was this kind of fascinating stuff. Somewhere in America some law students are going to get an exame question on this very topic, asking them whether the monkey owns the copyright. Cool stuff.
