David slater photographer biography

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A British nature photographer is beating his chest over Wikipedia’s refusal to take down the infamous “monkey selfie” from its stash of free-to-use pics.

Shutterbug David J. Slater claimed he owns the copyright to the infamous pic, which was snapped by a mischievous monkey during a shoot in Indonesia in 2011, The Telegraph reported.

The image, showing a grinning female ape, was a viral smash and later uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, a database of millions of photos and videos free for anyone to use.

It’s since been republished online countless times — but Slater claims he hasn’t seen a nickel in royalties.

He petitioned Wikipedia to pull the pic down in January, but the website refused, arguing that since the monkey took the photo, Slater can’t claim ownership.

Slater told Britain’s The Telegraph he was considering bringing the matter to court.

“If the monkey took it, it owns copyright, not me, that’s their basic argument,” Slater fumed. “What they don’t realize is that it needs a court to decide that.”

In a transparency report about removal requests released Wednesday, Wikipedia said, “We received a takedown request from the photographer, claiming that he owned the copyright to the

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Monkey selfie document dispute

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I am sure that British wildlife photographer David Slater rues the day that he ever laid eyes on Naruto, the Indonesian macaque, whose “monkey selfie” photo made Slater famous, but also brought him no end of grief and financial hardship. Readers will recall that it all started back in 2011 when Slater, a reputed wildlife photographer, set up his equipment with a view to photographing the goings on of a group of macaques in Sulawesi. The resultant photos, physically taken by one or more of the macaques after Slater set up the camera equipment having noted their interest in it, were promoted by Slater’s agent as the “monkey selfie”. It was a good marketing ploy, and for a time Slater earned some handsome royalties, but it was also an unfortunate choice of words because some users, notably Wikipedia, used the description of the photo as a “selfie” to deny Slater’s copyright and proclaim the work to be in the public domain on the grounds that Slater had not “taken” the photograph, as is generally required by US law for a photography copyright to be valid.

As I commented in my blog on this bizarre case last year (after being contacted by Slater), any fair minded person would agree that the work was his creation. He staged the scene, selected and set up the equipment, watched (su