Some things are inherently scarce. You only have 24 hours in a day, and there are only so many places you can build a house.

I think in a vacuum I would have agreed with the photographer. They spent the time and effort to acquire the photo. But I suppose when making legal decisions you have to think about how it will affect other situations.

I also wonder how PETA thought the monkey could have possibly exercised its copyright on the image.

I’ve seen that pic around and wondered if it was photoshopped. That nose looks really human. Anyway, now I know it’s a macaque taking a selfie.

Interesting tidbit from the wikipedia article,

On 21 August 2014 the United States Copyright Office published an opinion, later included in the third edition of the office’s Compendium of U.S. Copyright Office Practices, released on 22 December 2014, to clarify that “only works created by a human can be copyrighted under United States law, which excludes photographs and artwork created by animals or by machines without human intervention”

(emphasis mine)

Wonder what that means for AI images.