A monkey’s selfie has pitted a British photographer against Wikipedia in a battle over who owns the rights to the famous picture, reports ABC News.
The crested black macaque took photographer David Slater’s camera during a trip to Sulawesi, Indonesia, in 2011 and snapped the picture, the network reports.
Wikipedia insists Slater doesn’t own the copyright to the picture because he didn’t take it. It refuses to take down the picture over his protests.
The picture is available for free through the website’s Creative Commons section.
“This file is in the public domain, because as the work of a non-human animal, it has no human author in whom copyright is vested,” Wikipedia says on its website, according to the network.
Slater said his livelihood depends on such pictures.
“Photography is my only source of income,” he told ABC News. “I only earned from [that image] for one year out of the four years it’s been out. And the money I got from it only covered the cost it took me to get there. Photographers like me depend on those lucky, brilliant shots.”
