PETA launches legal action on behalf of Naruto the monkey who took a selfie with photographer’s camera

SO, the monkey who took that selfie photo is now caught up in a lawsuit over copyright. No, we’re not joking.

This 2011 photo provided by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) shows a selfie taken by a macaque monkey on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi with a camera that was positioned by British nature photographer David Slater. The photo is part of a court exhibit in a lawsuit filed by PETA in San Francisco on Tuesday, Sept. 22, 2015, which says that the monkey, and not Slater, should be declared the copyright owner of the photos. Slater has argued that, as the “intellect behind the photos,” he is the copyright owner since he set up the camera so that such a photo could be produced if a monkey approached it a pressed the button. (David Slater/Court exhibit provided by PETA via AP)

REMEMBER that monkey who took a selfie and it went viral?

Then the photographer who owned the camera began suing folks claiming copyright over the image.

Well, there’s more.

Seems the righteous peeps at PETA - People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals - have decided to step into the copyright debate by launching legal action on Naruto the monkey’s behalf.

According to papers lodged in the federal court in San Francisco, the animal rights group is seeking orders to allow it to administer all proceeds from the photos for the benefit of the monkey, which it identified as six-year-old Naruto, and other crested macaques living in a reserve on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, The Guardian reported.

The camera the photos were taken on belong to British nature photographer David Slater.

Slater was travelling through Sulawesi, Indonesia in 2011 photographing animals when he left his camera unattended.

He says he owns the rights to the photos, claiming he set up the camera so the monkeys could press the button.

Slater published a book, Wildlife Personalities, that contained Naruto’s selfies but outlets including Wikipedia have distributed them.

When Slater launched legal action against them, Wikipedia refused to take it down, claiming that no-one owns rights to the photo as it was taken by an animal and not a human, Quartz reported.

They subsequently won, and as a result the US Copyright Office updated its policies last year making registered copyright for works produced only by human beings.

Slater has said he was “very saddened” by the lawsuit as he considered himself an animal lover.

“The facts are that I was the intellect behind the photos, I set the whole thing up,” Slater said in an email to the Associated Press. “A monkey only pressed a button of a camera set up on a tripod – a tripod I positioned and held throughout the shoot.”

PETA said it hopes to make history and set a legal precedent with the lawsuit.

“If we prevail in this lawsuit, it will be the first time that a non-human animal is declared the owner of property, rather than being declared a piece of property himself or herself,” PETA general counsel Jeffrey Kerr said in a statement.

If PETA wins it will be the second time an animal would have won rights in a human court.

Earlier this year, in April, two chimpanzees were recognised as legal persons in New York.