All you need to know about the monkey selfie that has gone viral
The selfie was taken by British nature photographer, David Slater's camera
By : DC Correspondent
Update: 2014-08-07 16:04 GMT
Mumbai: A selfie, which was apparently taken by a money, is doing the rounds on the Internet. The monkey, who hijacked the photographer’s camera, took hundreds of selfies. Many of them were blurry and some pointed at the jungle floor but the photographer also found great selfies of the monkey that became viral soon after.
What exactly happened?
David Slater, a British nature photographer, was in Indonesia in 2011 to shoot the image of a black macaque when one of the animals came up to investigate his equipment. It was then that this animal took many pictures.
It took many amazing images, one of them including a selfie taken by a grinning female macaque, which became popular over the net and got Slater the recognition.
How is Wikimedia a part of this?
Wikimedia, the organisation behind Wikipedia, has refused the photographer’s repeated requests to distribute for free the image that shot him to fame. According to Wikimedia, the monkey pressed the shutter, hence, it owns the copyright. Slater is now fighting a legal battle against the organisation to get the rights for that image. The is jeopardising his income as anyone can take the image from Wikipedia and publish it for free.
Who owns the copyright?
In its report Wikimedia said that it ‘does not agree’ that the photographer owns the copyright, but also that US law means that ‘non-human authors’ do not have the right to automatic copyright of any photographs that they take.