Latest Copyright Battle

Yes, it's pretty funny. We were just discussing that earlier today.

http://fineartamerica.com/showmessages.php?messageid=2034492

I thought it would be a nice discussion piece for the forums. :)

Thanks for posting the clickable link. I couldn't get it to post correctly.

What a great picture!

I would think the photographer owns the rights. When I worked at the studio, even though I had shot some images, I did so with the boss's camera, in her studio under her direction. It mattered not that the images were of my great-niece for her 1st birthday (as my gift), but we did compromise in that I did all the retouching, image book set up, etc. on my own dime, but the studio got a book sample and a copy of the files.

This is actually pretty cut and dry. The Copyright statue allows for only two entities to own copyrights, individuals and corporations, LLC's etc. A monkey qualifies as neither. The photographer claims he didn't take the photo, so no copyright. Remember, copyright is made the instant the image is made, not found on a storage card. There was no work for hire agreement with the monkey, so the employer can't claim the copyright. The image is in the public domain.