The appellate court has reached the monkey affair that pulled the best selfies photos you've ever seen.
The story began two years ago when an Indonesian monkey macaque named Naruto, grabbed the camera machine of photographer David Slater, and started shooting selfies, which were so successful that they became viral on the internet.
Slater's exploitation of these photos was stopped by PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), an animal rights group, sued the photographer in its attempt to claim ownership of the selfies on behalf of the monkey.
The photographer has spent years in a copyright dispute, and now he is out of the question. OR Guardian mentions that the 52-year-old photographer has run out of money and is now working either by practicing the tennis coach or by taking a dog ride to ensure a livelihood.
The case, however, has reached the court of appeals, with the key question a remaining: to whom do the rights to the photos belong? to the monkey who took the selfies or to Slater who owns the camera, since technically the monkey was the one who pressed the key.
The US Copyright Office said in 2014 that it cannot assign Copyright to the animals, and a judge ruled in 2016 that the monkey could not claim the copyright of the famous selfies.
Since then, the case has taken its way to the federal appellate court, which this week heard the arguments of both sides. Slater did not have the funds to attend the hearing in San Francisco, he had to watch the live streaming live stream from his home in the UK.
"Every photographer dreams of a photo like this," says Slater in the Guardian. "If everyone would give me one pound for every time I use the photo, I would probably have 40 million pounds in my pocket. The revenue from these photos should have made me live comfortably now, but I do not live. "
