By Thomas Germain
Publication Date: 2026-04-15 09:18:00
Monkey business
The monkey took this selfie in 2011. For a brief, blissful time, Slater enjoyed worldwide attention from the image, but the problems began when someone uploaded the photo to Wikipedia, where it could be downloaded and used for free. He called on the Wikimedia Foundation to remove it, arguing that it had cost him £10,000 (worth about $13,400 today) in lost sales. In 2014, the organization rejected this, saying the photo was in the public domain because it was not taken by a person.
The dispute prompted the U.S. Copyright Office to issue a statement that it would not register works created by a nonhuman author, putting “a photograph taken by a monkey” at the top of a list of examples. (Slater did not respond to interview requests, but his representation prompted the BBC to use the photo in this article.)
The story gets stranger. Shortly thereafter, the advocacy group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta) sued Slater on behalf of the monkey. In this case, all proceeds from the…