New York: The final judgement on the wondrous selfie of a macaque monkey Naruto is out. A federal judge in San Francisco has forbidden him the right to his famous 2011 selfie.
A petition was filed in a US federal court by Peta to declare Naruto the author and owner of the globally known monkey photographs that he took himself.
On Wednesday, the judge ruled that the macaque monkey cannot be declared the copyright owner of the self-portraits, as reported.
In an earlier statement, PETA said: "The US Copyright Act grants copyright ownership of a 'selfie' to the 'author' of the photograph, and there is nothing in the law limiting such ownership on the basis of species”.
“Naruto has been accustomed to cameras throughout his life, saw himself in the reflection of the lens, made the connection between pressing the shutter and the change in his reflection, and posed for the pictures he took,” PETA said in a statement.
PETA had filed the lawsuit against photographer David J. Slater and his company, Wildlife Personalities Ltd., which both claim copyright ownership of the photos that the black macaque named Naruto indisputably took.
Naruto is known to field researchers in Sulawesi who have observed and studied him for years as they work in the region.
It all happened in 2011 in Indonesia when Slater left an unattended camera on a tripod after which Naruto took it started taking photographs.
