Monkey selfie case settles for a quarter of future royalties The curious case of the monkey that took a selfie and was denied copyright for its efforts has come to an end, with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and photographer David Slater agreeing on a future stream of royalty payments to simian charities. The case kicked off in 2011 when Slater left a camera within …
I just hope one day a scientist proves that carrots and broccoli etc. can feel pain, that'll finish the nasty animal murderers off.
If it was me I would have said I'll give 25% anyway but get Peta to call the monkey to court as a witness just to shut them up and stop them bringing future cases.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/17/peta-sorry-for-taking-girls-dog-putting-it-down
Prosecutor: Explain in your words the events of the day leading up to the photograph?
Naruto the Monkey: Ooh, ooh ooh, ooh, aah, aah, aah!
Defense: He's presenting his case!
Prosecutor: Your honour! The defendant is throwing turds!
Defense: He's pleading insanity!
Judge: I'm going to allow this.
Prosecutor: No more questions, Your Honour.
I just hope one day a scientist proves that carrots and broccoli etc. can feel pain, that'll finish the nasty animal murderers off.
They sort of can, they at least respond to stress, e.g. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4831116/ which raises awkward questions about where you draw the line. Though those questions never really go away if you're willing to recognise certain animals, such as the higher primates, as worthy of better treatment than, say, nematode worms. Of course you could attempt to become a fruitarian instead.
PETA are not an animal rights organisation, and El Reg should not be acknowledging them as such.
An organisation that kills over 90% of the animals it "rescues" cannot in anyone's mind be called an "animal rights" organisation.
An organisation that abducts and euthanises domestic pets cannot in anyone's mind be called an "animal rights" organisation.
This case does raise some interesting philosophical questions about animal rights (although what the hell use does the monkey have for royalties), but PETA are a hate group plain and simple.
Although I hate PETA with a passion and a lot of what they stand for, there are interesting principles at play here.
What is it that makes creatures have rights and the law apply to them? Is it their level of intelligence? Is it that they're human? What feature makes the law and its protections apply to a creature? To many the answer may seem simple, but it raises rather dubious principles.
For instance. If the answer is intelligence, I bet there are higher primates out there that are far more intelligent than some people. Does this mean we should strip those people of the protections etc. of the law, or should we give the protections to the primates? Doubt anyone would go for this.
Alternatively, could it be that the protections of the law applies to humans only. Now, this raises an interesting principle because it suggests that differences in DNA (species) is the deciding factor. Now, how much difference in DNA is enough to justify applying/denying the law to you? Bearing in mind there are lots of genetic differences in races etc. within humans, does this not suggest this principle could be used to justify racism? After all, there are specific DNA differences between people of different races. Why should these differences not be enough to justify applying/denying the law to them, just as the differences between human and primate DNA are enough if this principle holds? It becomes very much a question of judgement and opinion on how big the difference has to be. I'm not suer anybody wants to go down this rabbit hole, least of all me.
So, I sit here wondering on what basis do we apply/deny the law to creatures and I can't really find an answer that works when subjected to deep analysis. Yes, I can come up with some high level generic answers like it only applies to humans, but as explained above, that has implications. Why not apply it to all sentient creates? Why not to anything that can feel pain? At the moment, the way it works seems to simply rest on human beings arrogance and believing we should be counted separate from nature, even though nature created us (unless you believe in creationism) and we are therefore 'natural'.
I feel that whilst we should offer some rights and protections, conservation etc. It's probably going to far to think they should be getting royalties and setting them up with a bank account. Admittedly if said monkey does want to have a shop at Bloomingdales then fair enough. But it's pretty unlikely. The photographer was giving 10% of proceeds to a sanctuary which seems a fair compromise even though IMO the opinion that the photo is his really,
The starting point is my cat. It's a cat. It fights other cats at will and kills anything it can catch for its own amusement.
That's the starting point. Animals can do whatever they want.
Next we have people. We have laws. These laws apply to us people only. We made them up and live by them.
Now these cover how we relate to each other and also to how we treat animals. You might not like them, you might want to change these, but these are human laws.
Once we start trying cats for murder, then we can argue over their intellectual property - but until then..
DNA bit is a bit of a red-herring - most of it. We share 60% of ours with a banana.
Most of it sits there and doesn't do much.
@goldcd
"Once we start trying cats for murder, then we can argue over their intellectual property - but until then.."
An interesting point, but we sort of do, but not with cats. Take a bear or lion for instance. If one killed a human, it wasn't uncommon to hunt it down and kill it. Now, is this not effectively finding it guilty of killing a human (murder) and then exacting a punishment (death row) just like if it was a human being?
"DNA bit is a bit of a red-herring - most of it. We share 60% of ours with a banana."
It's not a red herring as it's all about degrees. It doesn't matter if it's 60% or 99.9% commonality. Who or what decides that 99.9% the same DNA as a 'standard' human being gives rights to the law, whilst 99.8% does not or whatever the figures are.
"Now, is this not effectively finding it guilty of killing a human (murder) and then exacting a punishment (death row) just like if it was a human being?"
No. It's more akin to redesigning a bad junction, callous as that sounds. There's no trial, no jury, etc. Instead it's a safety issue: there's a threat to human safety and that threat is removed.
@DavCrav
"No. It's more akin to redesigning a bad junction, callous as that sounds. There's no trial, no jury, etc. Instead it's a safety issue: there's a threat to human safety and that threat is removed."
Mmmm. Depending on the issue in human world, there isn't necessarily a trial and jury. Was Osama Bin Laden brought before a court, found guilty and sentenced to death? Executive actions often have no trial or jury. So, maybe killing one of these animals is simply an executive action?
"Was Osama Bin Laden brought before a court, found guilty and sentenced to death? Executive actions often have no trial or jury. So, maybe killing one of these animals is simply an executive action?"
Killing Osama bin Laden was almost certainly a crime. That doesn't mean people don't feel happy about it, and doesn't mean anyone will be tried for it, but it's a crime in the sense that it's against the law. And before you say "when the President does it, that makes it legal", it might have been legal under US law, but I very much doubt it was under Pakistani law. Or international law, such that it is.
DNA bit is a bit of a red-herring - most of it. We share 60% of ours with a banana
There was a time when the people with mashed bananas for brains were laughed at and left to beg in the streets...Then we started electing them to parliament and things went to shit...
An interesting point, but we sort of do, but not with cats. Take a bear or lion for instance. If one killed a human, it wasn't uncommon to hunt it down and kill it. Now, is this not effectively finding it guilty of killing a human (murder) and then exacting a punishment (death row) just like if it was a human being?
No because we are not really taking them to trial and asking them to defend their actions. Killing something like a maneater is an act of self defence. I wouldn't feel it was murder for it to hunt or eat us, it's an animal doing its thing that's become a problem because its found humans are easy targets.
Edit
I think the act of murder takes more consciousness than that.
Also that's attributing a lot of intelligence to a lot of the animals that become problems for us like bears or big cats and sharks. If I was going to choose an animal that I might think would do an act of murder it would be something closer to an elephant and even then more than likely it's acting for some other reason.
The starting point is my cat. It's a cat. It fights other cats at will and kills anything it can catch for its own amusement.
My cats do that too. But I still reckon if they were given the vote they'd do a better job than approx 17 million 'humans' on the electoral roll.
"What is it that makes creatures have rights and the law apply to them?"
Back this up a little.
What is it that makes humans have rights?
Simple: it's a convention we adopt amongst ourselves to make human society work better. Rights are a description of human behaviour
Can this apply to other species?
Some species are social, some aren't. Those that are have their own behaviours some of which are vastly different to humans. Start going down PETA's route and you end up trying to apply modern slavery legislation to worker bees.
@jake
"I got yer "interesting principle" right 'ere: Get back to me when the monkey (dog, cat, elephant, orca, whatever) asks for their royalties. Until then, the argument is kind of pointless."
I specifically didn't bring royalties into this and broadened it to the law in general. Royalties is just one part of the law and people get the whole law, but don't need to use it all. Plenty of people won't use the royalties part. How do you know it hasn't asked for royalties. You're making the assumption that because you can't understand it's speech (animals have languages and communicate in them, so effectively speech) doesn't mean it hasn't. Are you saying just because they can't speak english, it doesn't apply. Think where you're going with this. Take it to conclusion and you end up in an interesting place.
@jake
"Mike, get back to me when the animal can make the point you just made for itself. Until then, you're babbling about what-ifs piled upon what-ifs. "Turtles all the way down" isn't a valid argument."
You're admirably showing the arrogance that pervades human beings and will ultimately be our undoing. You're assuming because they don't use the same language as you, it doesn't count, which is silly. I'm sure if you were to ask them, they would say the same in reverse. We know from many studies that adminals are far more intelligent (obviously depends to some extent on which one) than perviously thought and also create their own societies, langauges, rules and behaviours. Exactly the same as humans. The fact we don't understand their communications (as in what each grunt or whatever means.....although this is beginning to change) doesn't change this.
It wasn't that long ago that people were going around saying humans were so much better than animals, as animals don't use tools, but that has been comprehensively trashed now, with many species using and even creating tools. Again, particularly true of primates and the like. Why should we deny them things because we don't understand them? If that's the case, we're going to be in real trouble if aliens ever reach this planet. They'll be classified as animals by your definition and denied everything. Difference is, their probable technological superiority would probably make the result less to our liking!!
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