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Photo by David Slater
Photo by David Slater

Monkey's selfie taken to court?

Copyright laws better act fast before a whole lot of monkey artists get pirated.

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There are some that say animal selfies are the real jam. They were part of one of the biggest trends of 2013 and have inundated Twitter under #animalselfies, where not just dogs and cats share their best poses for the camera, but also horses, elephants and any other number of God’s creatures.

Now one of the most viral animal selfies has taken center stage in a legal battle against Wikipedia.

The selfie taken by a crested black macaque back in 2011 went viral as soon as it hit the internet, and later ended up on Wikipedia, as well as on Wikimedia Commons.

The adorable photo was shot when British wildlife photographer David Slater traveled to Indonesia. He set up his equipment to start shooting, and suddenly, the monkey grabbed the camera and started taking selfies.

The Huffington Post reported that Slater asked Wikimedia to take the photo down, arguing that the copyright belongs to him, and that he should get paid whenever someone wants to use the photo.

But Wikimedia wouldn’t give an inch replying that, technically, the photo was taken by the monkey and not Slater.

“We take these assessments very seriously, and researched both sides of the argument. We didn't think the monkey owned the copyright -- instead, our assessment was that there's no one who owns the copyright,” said Kathering Maher, spokeswoman for Wikimedia, to The Huffington Post.

Copyright laws better act fast before a whole lot of monkey artists get pirated.
 

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