Wildlife photographer David Slater set up his tripod in an Indonesian national park and walked away, returning to find monkeys in the middle of a photo-session with his gear. You may have heard about it. TechDirt was one of the many of sites to report on this quirky item and started a debate on whether anyone can sell, license or assign copyright ownership of photograph allegedly shot by a monkey. Their position? Not legally, no. That’s when Caters Agency — currently licensing those photos — slapped TechDirt with an overzealous takedown notice.

Caters stated that “David’s” photographs were used without “David’s or our permission,” and told TechDirt to “remove these images from the site immediately.”

TechDirt responded with the obvious: Caters can’t claim copyright and regardless, posting photos quintessential to a news item is fair use. Caters responded:

Michael, regardless of the issue of who does and doesn’t own the copyright – it is 100% clear that the copyright owner is not yourself.

You have blatantly ‘lifted’ these photographs from somewhere – I presume the Daily Mail online. On the presumption that you do not like to encourage copyright theft (regardless of who owns it) then please remove the photographs.

TechDirt points out that uh, yeah, it does matter and issuing a takedown notice if you’re not the copyright holder is actually illegal. Also, “copyright theft” is using someone’s work as your own. The words they’re looking for are “copyright infringement” but that doesn’t apply.

So… can an agency claim copyright, collect revenue and intimidate bloggers over work done by monkeys? Did David Slater have the authority to license the work to Caters? He’s a nice guy and we are all for photographers’ rights here, so maybe if Caters issued a statement to announce that the nifty macaques are their clients and all licensing proceeds will benefit their national park habitat… we won’t throw poop at them.