| Let's summarize, £5000 worth of equipment on a £2000 trip and the best picture has been taken by a monkey. The monkey took "hundreds of pictures", increasing the likelihood of producing a few quality shots. Its quantitative approach has seemingly yielded the better results compared to whatever Mr. Slater has applied. Mr. Slater can not be attributed the director role either, as the macaque has "hijacked a camera", disregarding his setup and direction. But how could the macaque benefit from holding the copyright on the picture? "For every 10,000 images I take, one makes money that keeps me going. And that was one of those images."
This is what it should be about. We should want him, as any other professional doing his job, to make a living. Instead of spending money on beating him on court, let's spend the money to buy rights to the picture to put it up under a creative commons license. Why are we spending so much energy on finding out who's "right", instead of just doing "the right thing", in cases where there is a win-win situation like this. |
Legal precedent