From the Chicago Tribune, January 26, 2018, by Rick Kogan:
We had been talking about the ever intriguing goings-on at the White House, the health troubles of various mutual friends and the death of Hugh Hefner when the luncheon conversation turned to the curious case of the monkey who took a selfie.
E. Leonard Rubin is a lawyer and he began telling the story about a monkey named Naruto.
“It’s one of the many things that grabbed my interest,” said Rubin.
He is a fascinating guy, ever curious. He has had a lengthy and distinguished career, focusing on legal matters involving copyrights, trademarks, defamation, entertainment and data protection. He has served as president of the Midwest Chapter of the Copyright Society of the United States and as president and board member of the Lawyers for the Creative Arts, an organization that offers free help to needy writers, artists and composers. For more than a decade, he served as Playboy Enterprises Inc.’s general counsel and for more than three decades, mostly in collaboration with the noted attorney/judge Julian Frazin, he directed and wrote “Christmas Spirits,” the annual social/political musical satire show produced by the Chicago Bar Association.
He also writes for the Chicago Law Bulletin where there appeared his story titled “ENOUGH MONKEYING AROUND” in which he details the monkey-selfie case.
It all started when in 2011 a macaque monkey came upon a camera set up in the Tangkoko Batuangus Dua Saudara Nature Reserve in Indonesia by British nature photographer David Slater and started snapping away, taking selfies. Seeing the shots and liking what he saw, Slater published them in a book titled “Wildlife Personalities.”
The crux of Rubin’s article was this question: Does the monkey own the photo, and if so, if you or I want to use it do we have to get permission from the monkey?
Yes, we live in an increasingly litigious society, but c’mon.
Nevertheless People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), which named the theretofore nameless monkey Naruto (a city in Japan and a Japanese comic book and video series), sued Slater for copyright infringement. The case made its way to the U.S. District Court for Northern California, where it was dismissed in 2015.
Rubin wrote his story for the Chicago Law Bulletin in February 2016 and acknowledged that it was “entirely possible that PETA will appeal this decision … and the case will continue.” But he optimistically concluded that, “for now, at least, we can all surrender our cellphones to our pets, secure in the knowledge that we can use any selfies or pictures they take without fear.”
The case did continue, working its way to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, where it ended last September when a settlement was reached between PETA and Slater, who agreed to donate 25 percent of any future revenue from Naruto photos to groups that protect crested macaques and their habitat in Indonesia.
Hearing and then reading Rubin’s story brought to mind Bushman, the famous Lincoln Park Zoo gorilla and the rocky relationship he had with photographers.
Arriving here in 1930 from West Africa as a little thing — 2 years old and 38 pounds — Bushman would eventually reach 6 feet, 2 inches tall and 550 pounds and become a beloved local resident, perhaps because he allowed visitors to forget for a few minutes their Depression-era troubles. He understandably attracted the attention of newspaper photographers but he did not seem to care much for them, throwing his food and its byproducts at them.
He died Jan. 1, 1951 — people came in large numbers to the zoo after hearing the news, leaving flowers and shedding tears — and was stuffed and put on display at the Field Museum, where many visitors take selfies in his glass-encased company.
Full disclosure here: I have never taken a selfie. Why? No good reason, I suppose, but for being a really lousy photographer, with camera or phone.
That’s puts me in a minority for, as Rubin writes, “The sight of people taking ‘selfies’ is ubiquitous. Selfies are fun! Everywhere one goes, there are people extending their cellphones with their arms or using a specially built stick that holds those cellphones to take pictures of themselves, usually because of a picturesque background or a special person or group they want to picture themselves with.”
There is a recently published book titled “The Selfie Generation: How Our Self-Images Are Changing Our Notions of Privacy, Sex, Consent, and Culture” (Skyhorse). It is the fine and thought-provoking work by Alicia Eler, who was raised in Skokie and once wrote for the local publications, including Newcity and this newspaper, before becoming the art critic of the Star-Tribune newspaper in Minneapolis.
The book, which she calls a “combined memoir and analysis,” does contain, as one would expect, a mention of Naruto’s legal mess. But it also includes interviews with smart academics and scientists, and it poses many intriguing questions, among them: Why do people selfie?
There are a number of answers to that including, as Eler writes, “It can feel empowering to take selfies, however, because it is a photo that offers an element of self-control.”
As for Naruto, well, the life span of a macaque monkey is roughly 20 years and, since he was 6 when he first touched Slater’s camera, it is likely that he is, blissfully unaware of the legal tussle he initiated or even that he has a name, happily doing the things he likes to do in the jungles of Indonesia.
rkogan@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @rickkogan
