The United States Copyright Office has decided to side with Wikipedia over the controversial monkey selfie taken by British nature photographer David Slater in Indonesia. Wikipedia now claims ownership of the monkey selfie picture although it was captured by Slater in 2011 while he was touring in Sulawesi Indonesia. He ventured to Sulawesi to try and capture images of the crested black macaque, a specific type of monkey.

Slater was reported to have situated himself with a group of wild monkey for days, in order to gain their trust and act comfortable with his presence. Slater noticed the monkeys were particularly intrigued with his photography equipment, sparking an idea Slater set his cameras up so the monkeys could take pictures of themselves. Slater mounted his camera on a tripod and adjusted the settings, and waited for the monkeys to press the shutter button.

The monkeys successfully took photographs of themselves, although most of the photographs were blurry and nonsensical, some of them turned out greater than anticipated. The most famous of the bunch was a classic smiling selfie taken by one of the female monkeys.

The pictures began to appear in publications all over the globe, revered as Slater’s most famous photograph. Ultimately however, Wikimedia, the organization in control of wikipedia, began to distribute the photograph in its collection of images that were free of royalties; rendering the picture public domain. Slater is fighting Wikimedia, arguing the public domain standing is affecting his income potential from the photograph. The court is ruling against Slater since Slater was not the entity that actually push the shutter button, rather the monkey, who is a subject of nature. Although Slater has failed against the U.S. the United Kingdom copyright designs allows a photographer to claim the rights over a picture even if they did not take it.