Animals have entered selfie craze

link Sharna Johnson

Local columnist

Goofy grins, sultry eyes, sweet smiles, pensive stares … everywhere you turn, they are all the rage.

The “selfie” works a lot like playing in a mirror, capturing and immortalizing those fractional moments of self-perspective that in days of old were rarely documented.

A phenomenon with ever-evolving social ramifications, thanks to the infinite availability of cameras on phones, mobile devices, computers and the like, anyone can point that camera at their own face and click.

Gone are the days when using a camera was a science. Now achieving the perfect shot is easy thanks to cameras that do all the thinking, compensate for poor conditions and yes, lack of skill and technical know-how.

Real-time viewing screens give the ability to use the camera as a mirror, and, limited only by virtual storage space, one can artfully pose time after time, click after click, until they achieve the perfect shot — that view from the mirror that they want to share with the world.

Anyone can now snap that perfect shot of his or her own mug, and anyone does, from the average person to children -- And, yes, even animals.

Yep, that’s right, modern animals can, and do, take self-portraits.

Monkeys have been the natural first-comers to the selfie scene, the fact that they have fingers and intelligent, playful curiosity no doubt aiding them in pushing buttons and using touch screens to produce up-the-nose shots and cheesy grins for the camera.

Elephants and dogs have also been reported to master new technology, using those same touch screens to activate camera shutters and capture selfies.

At most, these images give a unique vantage point, a birds-eye view into the perspective they hold as they look into the camera; at the least they are cute, funny and sometimes strikingly human.

But there is a catch.

Unlike humans, who own their camera clicks; the trend has opened up a new intellectual property question of exactly who owns animal selfies — a question that has prompted the U.S. Copyright Office to take a stand.

Released for public comment this week, an official clarification of copyright issuance practices firmly states that copyrights will not be issued for works created by animals.

It is reported to be the first major revision of copyright practices in more than two decades and a clear reflection of the interesting modern world we live in.

The issue of animal selfies and who owns the rights is one that has arisen most recently after a monkey “borrowed” the camera of a British photographer and snapped a real winner of a smiling self-portrait.

It’s a photo the photographer is fighting to keep the rights to.

But selfies aren’t the only things affected through the new copyright decision.

Paintings by elephants and cats, music composed by howling dogs, sculptures by angsty lemurs — pretty much any creative product made by a critter — will be considered in the public domain, unowned and free to be used by anyone, in anyway they wish.

Of course the layers to the issue are many — if an animal is itself considered property in most states, then it cannot own anything, but does its owner own what it would own … the interpretations are sure to be many and the court battles will follow.

But for now, if it was created by snout, trunk, tail, paw or claw, it belongs to everyone, regardless of who owns the camera or the critter.

In the meantime, those critters (and their people) that don’t want to share may want to keep their selfies to their selfies.

Sharna Johnson is a writer who is always searching for ponies. You can reach her at:

insearchofponies

@gmail.com.