Well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle!

If a monkey typed randomly on a keyboard, how unlikely is it that it would write “War and Peace?”

Maybe as unlikely as the liberal 9^th Circuit Court of Appeals getting something right … but in the case of PETA and the monkey, it did.

You may have seen that hysterical picture of an Indonesian macaque called Naruto, who grabbed a wildlife photographer’s camera and took a selfie. Acting as Naruto’s “next friend,” (that’s a legal term), the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals sued the photographer, claiming Naruto should own the copyright to the picture.

The 9^th Circuit ruled animals can’t bring copyright suits and threw the case—and PETA—out. One judge went so far as to question how good a “friend” PETA was to Naruto, since they were seeking their own “institutional interests,” and not directly benefiting the monkey.

Well, whaddya know. Even the 9^th Circuit gets that animals are animals … not people.

For more on culture, come to BreakPoint.org.

Image: Wikicommons