His problems began when Californian-based blog Techdirt and the online encyclopedia Wikipedia (whose mission statement is 'to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free licence or in the public domain') muscled in.
They claimed the image was uncopyrightable because the monkey was the creator — and so they uploaded the picture onto their websites, free for anyone to use. To Dave, this was an assault on his livelihood.
Understandably, he asked Techdirt and Wikipedia to stop using the pictures — but they refused. Faced with little choice, Dave decided to sue for up to £18,000, saying: 'There's a lot more to copyright than who pushes the trigger.'
The legal consensus was that not only was Dave unable to assert copyright, but neither could the monkey.
The only primates with any hope of making money out of 'the world's greatest selfie' were, inevitably, lawyers.
Two years ago, as the dispute rumbled on, the animal rights organisation People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) launched a legal action on behalf of the monkey, which it called Naruto, claiming that it should be declared the owner of its own image. It demanded the right to manage the macaque's funds for its benefit.
PETA argued that the monkey was unable, 'due to inaccessibility and incapacity', to bring its own lawsuit. Dave says that, understandably, his lawyers treated the claim as a joke.
Sadly, it wasn't. Last year, a U.S. judge ruled against PETA, saying that animals are not covered by the Copyright Act.



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