This document discusses the question of whether non-human creations such as those by animals, plants, AI systems, or supernatural entities could qualify for copyright. It outlines several legal cases that have touched on this issue without resolving it definitively. The document considers options like denying copyright for non-human works due to a lack of human originality/creativity, developing a novel rights regime for AI, or expanding approaches that grant copyright to the programmers of computer-generated content. Overall, the document examines the complex legal and philosophical implications of extending intellectual property rights to non-human sources.

1. N O N - H U M A N
C O P Y R I G H T ?
A N D R E S G U A D A M U Z , U N I V E R S I T Y O F S U S S E X
M O N I Q U E G R I M O R D , I M A G I N AT I O N O F T H I N G S

2. I T A L L S TA R T E D W I T H A M O N K E Y…

3. … A N D A C AT…

4. … A N D A J A G U A R …

5. D O S H E E P D R E A M O F E L E C T R I C
C O P Y R I G H T ?

6. N O N - H U M A N
C O P Y R I G H T ?
• Animals.
• Plants.
• AI.
• Ghosts.
• Aliens.
• Excel spreadsheets?

7. B O T O R N O T

8. M A C H I N E M U S I C

9. M E C H P O E T RY
he was silent for a moment.
it was quiet for a moment.
it was dark and cold.
there was a pause.
it was my turn.

10. W E L L , N O N E E D T O W O R RY Y E T

11. W H Y I S I T I M P O R TA N T ?
Y O U M AY B E A S K I N G “ S O W H AT ? ”

12. C R E AT I V E
I N D U S T R I E S
• Procedurally-generated
games.
• Journalistic pieces.
• Art.
• Music.
• Literature.

13. R I G H T S A N D
R E S P O N S I B I L I T I E S
• This is not a new argument
in law, dates back to
Roman laws dealing with
slavery.
• Rights and responsibilities
of subjects that cannot
exercise rights.
• Negligence, contract, tort,
we have ways of dealing
with liability.

14. ! M E D I E N G R U P P E
B I T N I K
• Random Darknet Shopper
• Botnet buying random items
from the Darknet using Bitcoins.
• It purchased drugs.
• Police confiscated the bot, then
released.
• Public prosecutor deemed the
artistic work outweighed any
possible damage of purchasing
drugs.

15. E U R O P E A N
L A W
• In Europe a work is original if
it is “author’s own intellectual
creation reflecting his
personality”.
• Choice, selection of
elements, composition, all
may prove originality.
(Infopaq, Painer cases).
• Unclear if setting AI
parameters and/or algorithms
would be enough.

16. U S C O P Y R I G H T
O F F I C E
“In order to be entitled to
copyright registration, a work
must be the product of human
authorship. Works produced by
mechanical processes or random
selection without any
contribution by a human author
are not registrable. Thus, a
linoleum floor covering featuring
a multicolored pebble design
which was produced by a
mechanical process in
unrepeatable, random patterns, is
not registrable.”

17. G H O S T I N T H E
S H E L L ?
• There’s a relatively strong case to be
made towards the recognition of non-
human rights in some US case law.
• Take Urantia Foundation v. Maaherra,
114 F.3d 955 (1997), where the spirit of
dead aliens dictated a book, and it
was argued that this work could have
copyright: “copyright laws . . . do not
expressly require ‘human’ authorship.”
• Also see Jap Herron case (Mark
Twain’s ghost).
• Artificial solutions to fix similar issues
involving spirit guides and mediums.

18. N A R U T O V
S L AT E R
• PETA (acting as Naruto’s friends),
sue British photographer David
Slater in a California court for
copyright infringement.
• Case never deals with whether
monkeys can own copyright, but
rather on whether the monkey can
sue at all.
• Case dismissed and appealed, then
settled out of court (Naruto’s wildlife
refuge will receive percentage of
royalties), so ownership question
was never addressed

19. A C O H S P T Y LT D V
U C O R P P T Y LT D [ 2 0 1 2 ]
F C A F C 1 6 ( A U S T R A L I A )
• HTML source code for some data
sheets were generated by a
computer program, very basic stuff.
• Question arose whether this code
can be protected by copyright as
original work as it was computer-
generated.
• In first instance judge found that the
code was “not the work of any one
human author”.
• Federal Court agrees that there’s no
copyright as there’s no human author.

20. U K L A W
S 9(3) “In the case of a
literary, dramatic,
musical or artistic work
which is computer-
generated, the author
shall be taken to be the
person by whom the
arrangements necessary
for the creation of the
work are undertaken.”

21. O P T I O N S F O R
N O N - H U M A N
C O P Y R I G H T
• No copyright due to no
originality/creativity.
• No registration.
• Make UK’s approach more
widely used, programmer gets
copyright.
• Take a novel approach and
study some sort of rights regime
for AI.
• Artificial Intelligence rights next?

22. C O N C L U D I N G

23. @ T E C H N O L L A M A
A . G U A D A M U Z @ S U S S E X . A C . U K
The mech shall inherit the Earth