They were finally able to take care of this monkey business.
And as I’m reading and writing about this story, Nevada Appeal staff member Molly Moser has just brought us a chocolate milkshake to celebrate National Chocolate Milkshake Day. So it seems appropriate to me I’m drinking a chocolate milk shake while writing about a controversy involving a monkey taking selfies of itself.
A macaque monkey used a photographer’s camera to take photos of itself, which brought up the question who owns the rights to the photographs: the monkey or the photographer?
The People for Ethical Treatment of Animals thought the rights belonged to the monkey and sued for those rights on behalf of the monkey. The photographer, David Slater, and PETA, settled in the case, with Slater agreeing to donate 25 percent of future revenue from the monkey selfies to charities dedicated to protecting the macaques in Indonesia.
Evidently Slater gets to keep the remaining 75 percent of the money, which I assume is considerable, otherwise I don’t think these people would be fighting over monkey selfies in the first place.
Of course it would be awesome if there was already a movie in the works “Monkey See, Monkey Sue” in which Nicholas Cage stars as Slater. (You know we always look for any excuse to use a Nicholas Cage reference for no reason whatsoever).
At any rate, here’s hoping the monkey has been given a chocolate milk shake for its troubles.
— Charles Whisnand
