The US based organisation Wikimedia has refused a photographer’s repeated pleas to remove a “monkey selfie” because the monkey pressed the shutter button making the photo ineligible for copyright.
The photographer claimed that a monkey pressed the shutter button of the camera so it should own the copyright of his images which are being used online without his permission, reports UK-based The Telegraph.
In 2011, British nature photographer David Slater was in Indonesia to take image of a crested black macaque when one of the animals hijacked a camera and took hundreds of selfies.
Of the pictures, a selfie was taken by a grinning female macaque that made headlines around the world and brought Mr Slater his 15 minutes of fame.
"They were quite mischievous jumping all over my equipment, and it looked like they were already posing for the camera when one hit the button," he said at the time. "The sound got his attention and he kept pressing it. At first it scared the rest of them away but they soon came back - it was amazing to watch.”
"He must have taken hundreds of pictures by the time I got my camera back, but not very many were in focus. He obviously hadn't worked that out yet."
Slater now faces a legal battle with Wikimedia after the images were added to the collection of royalty-free images.
Wikimedia Commons is a collection of over 22 million images and videos that are in the public domain.
Wikimedia, which is behind Wikipedia, claims that copyright of the photo belongs to the monkey that took the photo.