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Who owns the copyright on a monkey selfie?

Wikimedia

Press release issued: 11 August 2014

The debate between photographer David Slater and Wikimedia, the company behind Wikipedia, over who owns pictures taken by a crested black macaque has raised questions over the ownership of online images.

The law is mainly silent on who owns the copyright for works that are not created by humans, with this being the most recent example of digital photography creating circumstances that have not been anticipated by those who make the rules.

Andrew Charlesworth, from the University of Bristol Law School, discusses this further in a blog on The Conversation website explaining the intricacies of monkey selfie copyright law.

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