阅读理解
In 2011, when
British photographer David J. Slater was visiting a park in Indonesia, his
camera was taken away by a group of black monkeys. The result was hundreds of
monkey selfies(自拍照).
The best ones show a female monkey smiling toothily for the camera. Slater then
sold the photos and they became popular on the Internet.
Nobody
knew they would create a copyright
battle some years later.
Last month, Wikimedia Commons put the monkey selfies
online under a collection of free photos without Slater's permission. Slater
asked the website to take them down since he owns the copyright.
However, Wikimedia
Foundation-the organization behind Wikimedia Commons-refused Slater's request. They
said that according to US copyright law, whoever pushes the button on the
camera owns the copyright to the photo. It was the monkeys but not Slater that
pushed the button. What's more, monkeys don't own copyright. "US copyright
law says that works that come from a non-human source(血统)can't ask for copyright, "
said Katherine Maher, Chief Communications Officer of Wikimedia.
Slater
argues that the pictures belong to him as they were taken from his camera. He
said he bought the cameras, he spent a lot of money to travel to Indonesia, and
it was his carelessness that allowed the monkeys to take his cameras away. All
these have made him the author of the picture, no matter who pushed the button.
In a sense(在某种意义上), the
monkeys could be regarded as his assistant, Slater said.
As of now(到目前为止), there has been no result in
the Monkey Selfie case. Who do you think will win this interesting battle?
