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Caters News Agency claims to have bought exclusive rights to the iconic self-portrait taken by a macaque that snatched a photographer's camera while the latter was shooting on Sulawesi. Caters has sent copyright threats to some sites that reproduced th...

Caters News Agency claims to have bought exclusive rights to the iconic self-portrait taken by a macaque that snatched a photographer's camera while the latter was shooting on Sulawesi. Caters has sent copyright threats to some sites that reproduced the image, prompting Techdirt (one of the nastygram recipients) to delve deeply into the question of the copyrightability of works created by non-humans.

Under US law (we'll deal with elsewhere soon), you have to have made the creative contributions (the copyrightable aspects) to the image to have it qualify for any copyright protection (and then, it's only the creative aspects that get the copyright). Thus, you could argue that if the photographer had set up the camera, framed the shot, and simply let the monkey click the shutter, perhaps there is some copyright there (though, even then it would likely be limited to some of the framing, and not much else). But David Slater has already admitted that the monkeys found a camera he had left out by accident and that he did not have anything to do with setting up the shot. He's stated that the monkeys were playing with the shiny objects and when one pushed the shutter, the noise interested them and they kept it up. It would be difficult to argue he made any sort of creative contribution here to warrant copyright.

Can the monkeys get the copyright? No. As Justin Levine kindly pointed out, according to the rules published by the US Copyright Office:

503.03 Works not capable of supporting a copyright claim.

Claims to copyright in the following works cannot be registered in the Copyright Office:

503.03(a) Works-not originated by a human author.

In order to be entitled to copyright registration, a work must be the product of human authorship. Works produced by mechanical processes or random selection without any contribution by a human author are not registrable. Thus, a linoleum floor covering featuring a multicolored pebble design which was produced by a mechanical process in unrepeatable, random patterns, is not registrable. Similarly, a work owing its form to the forces of nature and lacking human authorship is not registrable; thus, for example, a piece of driftwood even if polished and mounted is not registrable

Can We Subpoena The Monkey? Why The Monkey Self-Portraits Are Likely In The Public Domain






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Kyle Jones, a guitarist, had the clever idea of recording himself playing guitar from inside his guitar. He didn't expect to see the guitar strings turn into wacky, wavy and shapely lines. It's crazy....

Kyle Jones, a guitarist, had the clever idea of recording himself playing guitar from inside his guitar. He didn't expect to see the guitar strings turn into wacky, wavy and shapely lines. It's crazy. And it's thanks to the iPhone. More »







  • Recreating the Dock Ellis "tripping balls" no-hitter on XBox on LSD

    Deadspin editor A.J. Daulerio attempted to re-create Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Dock Ellis' infamous no-hitter of June 12, 1970 against the San Diego Padres, pitched while tripping on acid. Daulerio did so by dropping LSD, and re-enacting the game on the Xbox version of MLB2K11. The resulting post is a great read.

    Only once did I feel a brief flicker of hallucinatory terror. We were in a pizza parlor, in the friendly Cobble Hill section of Brooklyn, and I was having difficulty deciding which slice to purchase because even though my stomach said "plain slice" my mind begged for "chicken jalapeño with shredded garlic knots," which wasn't even available but, dammit, it should have been that day. It didn't feel like an unreasonable amount of time had passed. Then a slice of white pie was whooshed out of the giant oven by the pizzaman, and the gurgling cheese appeared angry with me. Maybe I was holding up the line. I ducked behind the soda fountain to refocus my fritzy thoughts for a couple extra minutes until that ricotta stopped messing with me. I ordered two plain slices quickly, then added on a slice of white because I felt the need to assert myself. Hey, white pizza. I eat you. You don't eat me.

    Video, NYO story, Deadspin post, and historical background.

    dock_newsstory2.jpg


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Deadspin editor A.J. Daulerio attempted to re-create Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Dock Ellis' infamous no-hitter of June 12, 1970 against the San Diego Padres, pitched while tripping on acid. Daulerio did so by dropping LSD, and re-enacting the game on...

Deadspin editor A.J. Daulerio attempted to re-create Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Dock Ellis' infamous no-hitter of June 12, 1970 against the San Diego Padres, pitched while tripping on acid. Daulerio did so by dropping LSD, and re-enacting the game on the Xbox version of MLB2K11. The resulting post is a great read.

Only once did I feel a brief flicker of hallucinatory terror. We were in a pizza parlor, in the friendly Cobble Hill section of Brooklyn, and I was having difficulty deciding which slice to purchase because even though my stomach said "plain slice" my mind begged for "chicken jalapeño with shredded garlic knots," which wasn't even available but, dammit, it should have been that day. It didn't feel like an unreasonable amount of time had passed. Then a slice of white pie was whooshed out of the giant oven by the pizzaman, and the gurgling cheese appeared angry with me. Maybe I was holding up the line. I ducked behind the soda fountain to refocus my fritzy thoughts for a couple extra minutes until that ricotta stopped messing with me. I ordered two plain slices quickly, then added on a slice of white because I felt the need to assert myself. Hey, white pizza. I eat you. You don't eat me.

Video, NYO story, Deadspin post, and historical background.

dock_newsstory2.jpg




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What does it feel like to fly like a bird by using a jet-propelled wing? Only one man on Earth knows, and he shared his story with the crowd at TED Global in Edinburgh, Scotland, on Tuesday.Yves Rossy’s invention allows him to fly by attaching to...

What does it feel like to fly like a bird by using a jet-propelled wing? Only one man on Earth knows, and he shared his story with the crowd at TED Global in Edinburgh, Scotland, on Tuesday.

Yves Rossy’s invention allows him to fly by attaching to his back a four-engine jet suit with wings, which he starts up after jumping out of a helicopter or plane.

Unlike similar aircraft, Rossy’s has no steering controls. Rather, he uses his body to steer — arching his back gains altitude and pushing his shoulders forward sends him into a dive. “If you put steering in it’s more like an airplane. … I wanted to keep freedom of movement,” Rossy told the TED Global crowd.

Traveling at speeds of up to 190 miles per hour and a height of 3,000 meters, the aircraft can stay in the air for about 10 minutes, which was enough time for Rossy to cross the English Channel. He also recently flew above the Grand Canyon.

The device isn’t quite ready for mass consumption, however. Rossy, who served as both a commercial and military pilot earlier in his life, has had to use the wing’s escape parachute about 20 times — sometimes after becoming disoriented in the clouds, others after more than one of the engines fails.

Rossy, who does hope that one day his invention or something like it could be used by anyone, summarized the experience by saying, “I don’t have feathers, but I feel like a bird sometimes. It’s an unreal feeling.”

You can check what one of his flights and invention look like in the video below from his Grand Canyon mission:

Image courtesy of James Duncan Davidson / TED

More About: aviation, TED, ted global, yves rossy

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I love the ocean, which is one of the three reasons I love this project by David Bowen. The other two being that is technically awesome and absolutely mesmerizing. More »

I love the ocean, which is one of the three reasons I love this project by David Bowen. The other two being that is technically awesome and absolutely mesmerizing. More »







  • Montage of ships being launched

    If you were never quite sure what happened after the pretty lady broke a bottle of champagne against the hull, you might find this amusing. Apparently, after all the pomp and circumstance, boats are just kind of unceremoniously dropped into the drink.

    Video Link

    Via Alan Simon


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Up late creating a whole new schema for organizing my social network into "Circles" and populating them with everyone I know. Surely there's an app for this?

Up late creating a whole new schema for organizing my social network into "Circles" and populating them with everyone I know. Surely there's an app for this?