[loupgarou21]

OK, in that case, what if I took my camera equipment to a park, got it all setup, and hid in the bushes, hoping someone would use my equipment, that I setup, to take a picture.

You, seeing the camera equipment, become curious, and use the camera to take a picture of yourself.

I created the conditions necessary for you to take a picture of yourself, but you took the picture.

Who, in your non-lawyer eyes, owns the copyright to the picture? Does it make a difference if you're a human or a monkey in that decision?

[bunderbunder]

That one's rather different, since there are two human parties involved. I didn't see anything that would resolve that question in the reading, but I imagine there might be some legal precedent from prior cases that one could dig up. But where US law doesn't allow for copyright to be assigned to non-humans, bringing an additional human agent into the scenario creates a hypothetical that is non-analogous and therefore unnecessarily confusing.

I think that a closer analogy would be if you were to set up a motion-activated camera trap in the park to take pictures of the local wildlife. In that case it would be fairly uncontroversial to say that you would get copyright to the pictures. Compared to that hypothetical, I think that as far as US law is concerned it could well be the case that the fact that for this photograph the action the monkey took to trigger the camera shutter involved actually coming into contact with the shutter release button is ultimately a distinction without a difference.