Animal rights? Monkey selfie case may undo evolution of the Internet

Enlarge / The cover of the book at the center of a legal dispute about animal rights, copyright, and an open Internet. (credit: Blurb)

Going on two years now, an Indonesian macaque monkey named Naruto, represented by his self-appointed lawyers from the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, has been trying to claim ownership of the selfies he took of himself with a camera he swiped from a British nature photographer in the jungle of the Tangkoko reserve.

This issue is no laughing matter, regardless of how bizarre it seems.

Let's assume PETA is correct-that copyrights can be granted to animals. After all, US copyright law grants ownership of images to those who snapped them. So why can't that owner be a monkey? That's PETA's position-one that has been generally down-voted so far in court and across a broad swath of the Internet as being bananas.

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