Reply to post: Utter Stupidity. Utterly Pissing Me Off.

Utter Stupidity. Utterly Pissing Me Off.

As a vegetarian and someone who supports various animal welfare operations, I want to say without the slightest reservation that this is beyond stupid and the damage it does to the actual cause of preventing mistreatment of animals is immeasurable. I am furious. The same way you get when any idiot (or in this case group of idiots) attempts to support you in a way that makes you look like a cretin.

This winds me up to no end which is why you'll find posts like this from me on Ars Technica, here, anywhere that I can make a futile attempt to counter the harm PETA do to the cause of animal welfare.

Anyway, attempting to calm down and explain rationally what is wrong with PETA's action here, imo, It's essentially a question of authorship. That is what copyright comes down to - who is the author, who created the work. There's all sorts of work involved in producing this photo, and yes, much of it creative. I can tell just by looking at it that this is not the raw state of the photo - there's been all sorts of post-processing to get it to look like that, there's framing of the image as well - which for those who haven't gotten into photography, is actually something that depends a lot on artistic skill and creativity. There's the selection process as well which takes time and artistic talent. I can take a hundred photos and get two out of them that I'm happy with and it takes time and judgement to do that. We're not looking at a blurred photo of a monkey's foot with some leaves in the background. We're looking at the best photograph selected by a professional who knows their stuff. Then there's the purchase of thousands of dollars of equipment, the travelling half-way around the world to photograph them, days patiently becoming accepted by the monkeys, setting up cameras so that a monkey could do this in the first place. The photograph is the product of all of these things - a mix of genuine artistic creativity and resource, not random luck. I have often found that the harder I work the luckier I am. The artist did a huge amount to make this happen. And they did just as much afterwards to produce a final piece of artwork that this now is.

And PETA want to argue that the monkey contributed more creativity than all his work? If he'd set up a camera to take pictures of trees in the wind and had the trigger activated by the breeze would they credit the air with the copyright? There's as much deliberate intent written on the wind as the monkey has understanding of a camera. Are they equally for suing all these nature documentaries that show animals by night because they tripped some trigger the film crew had installed. Again, I'm not seeing this magic hard line that would separate the two.

Nature photographers actually do a lot to help with nature conservation and animal welfare by making people aware of the beauty and value of what is out there. This photographers work does more to make people care about monkeys half way around the world than anything I have seen PETA do. But the nature of the photography business is that you put in lots of effort and sometimes days or even weeks to take hundreds or thousands of photos and come out of it with the three or four that you can sell to cover your costs and make a modest living. And PETA want to take that away? And I do mean take - they are arguing that they should be custodians of the monkey's earnings in this suit.

This monkey suit.

So thank you PETA, for making me and every other person who wants animals to not be mistreated, look like a slack-jawed drooling lunatic. Thank you very much.