Celestial Beings

I recently happened across a 1997 copyright case addressing the issue of whether or not celestial beings could secure copyrights. It was completely irrelevant to my work that day, but it made for good entertainment. So I kept reading…

In Urantia Foundation v. Maaherra, the issue was: can the people who received messages from celestial beings and collected them into a spiritual guide claim copyright protection? And the court found that, yes, they could – not because the celestial beings had assigned the rights, and not because celestial beings are entitled to copyright, but rather because the people had provided input through the arrangement of the messages they received. This human input was enough to secure a copyright registration.

To me, this case doesn’t jive with David Slater’s famous Monkey Selfie case. Slater put countless hours into setting up his cameras in just the right way – traveling to Indonesia, selecting equipment and camera settings, angles, buttons, etc. – to make sure he captured some monkey selfies. Unfortunately, the Copyright Office denied Slater registration. Their position was 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."

I believe Slater contributed at least as much to the creation of the Monkey Selfie as the Urantia Foundation did when the foundation’s members compiled the messages from the celestial beings into the Urantia Book. (It's available on Amazon for those who are interested - it's massive.)

I know these are old cases, but they are becoming relevant again as we draw the lines for AI copyright law.

Smile!

Portrait of a female Macaca nigra (Celebes crested macaque) in North Sulawesi, Indonesia, who triggered photographer David Slater's camera.