Hey Mike,
I saw this story on Yahoo a while back. The picture the monkey took of himself smiling is so cute. You know this photographer probably really has lost a lot of money by wiki putting this in the public domain.
When I think about it - the photographer set everything up and purposely let the monkey play with his equipment. Then he cropped and edited the resulting image. If it had been a film wouldn't he be considered the producer - I don't see the big difference just because it's a still photograph. Saying that he is not the copyright holder because the monkey pushed the button is a real stretch. I hope the photographer wins this.
Josie
I agree with Josie. Copyright's are to protect intellectual content. Intellectual content equals the intent of the creator for the product that is shared publicly.
In this instance, the monkey is the subject of the photo not the creator of the intellectual content. The cropped and edited picture by the photographer is the picture that was published not the unedited photo snapped by the monkey. The picture the monkey snapped contained no intellectual content and even if it had, the monkey is ineligible to copyright it. Wiki argues the ineligibility of the monkey to hold a copyright justifies it going into the public domain but does not resolve nor address the intellectual content which was solely created by the photographer.
My opinion is this disagreement appears to be over money and not intellectual content and the photographer should easily prevail.