Four years ago, I noted a controversy over "who owns the copyright to this remarkable self-portrait, snapped by an Indonesian macaque monkey after a nature photographer left his camera unguarded."

Click on the picture for a larger view.

Now, incredibly, the group that calls itself "People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals" wants to grab all revenue resulting from this photo.  The theory is that the monkey owns the copyright and PETA would administer it on behalf of the monkey and others of his island.  David Crary has this story for AP.

The notion of a fringe wacko group like PETA being a court-appointed administrator of anything is bizarre enough in itself, but the concept of an animal owning a copyright is even more so.

Intellectual property is an artificial, government-created monopoly on information that would otherwise be free for anyone to use.  There is no mystery about its purpose.  It is in the Constitution in black and white -- "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."

Even if an animal could be the owner of any property at all, how would granting an animal a copyright "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts"?  It wouldn't in the least.  Whenever granting exclusive rights to a class of information would not create the incentive that furthers the constitutional purpose of copyright, that class should not be copyrighted.  Whether this monkey gets exclusive rights to this photo will have no effect on the number or quality of simian selfies produced in the future.

Fortunately, the U.S. Copyright Office has this aspect of the law right.  Crary reports:

Last year, the U.S. Copyright Office issued an updated compendium of its policies, including a section stipulating that it would register copyrights only for works produced by human beings. It specified that works produced by animals, whether a photo taken by a monkey or a mural painted by an elephant, would not qualify.

I own an elephant painting, BTW.  Good to know it's not copyrighted.