Can Animals Own Copyright?

Le résumé fourni par la source

In 2015, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals sued the wildlife photographer David Slater for breach of copyright for publishing photographs, known as the Monkey Selfies, allegedly taken by Naruto, a Celebes crested macaque. The case brings up important questions about animal agency, animal authorship, and animal rights in the United States. Putting Naruto’s selfies in conversation with animal-generated photography from the late nineteenth century and my own camera-trap images, I question if copyright is the best way to use photographs as an argument for animal rights. Instead, I turn to the photo-theorist Ariella Aïsha Azoulay’s “civil contract of photography” to read animal-generated photography as a collaborative act that produces a sort of deterritorialized citizenship. Like the political philosophers Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka’s call to rely on a citizenship model to relate to animals, Azoulay’s theory allows us to view the animals in their self-generated images as participatory citizens.

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