Selfie monkey named PETA ‘Person of Year’
JAKARTA: An Indonesian monkey who shot to fame after it snapped a grinning selfie -- and sparked a landmark US copyright case -was named “Person of the Year” on Wednesday by the animal rights group that took on the simian’s cause.
The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals said it was honouring Naruto, a crested black macaque, to recognise that “he is someone, not something”.
In 2011, the monkey pressed the shutter button while staring down the lens of a camera set up by British photographer David Slater. The photos went viral and PETA launched a lawsuit claiming the then six-yearold Naruto should be “declared the author and owner of his photograph”.
“Naruto’s historic selfie challenged the idea of who is a person and who is not and resulted in the first-ever lawsuit seeking to declare a non-human animal the owner of property, rather than being declared property himself,” PETA Founder Ingrid Newkirk said on Wednesday.
The court case set off an international debate about personhood for animals.
Slater maintained he owned the rights to the photos since he engineered its creation. He won the first hearing in California but PETA then appealed. The case was settled in September with Slater agreeing to donate 25% of future revenue from using or selling the monkey selfies to help protect the habitat of crested macaques in Indonesia.