i dream of being possible

sudden thoughts on monkey selfie

just saw more jokes about the monkey selfie copyright debate

which, sure, amusing and all that

but i”m suddenly struck by the miserable tech ppl involved in this and how irritating this debate is

on a very deep level

like

do u know how many of my friends and inspirations (all marginalized, many of them Black)

have had their creative work plagiarized, stolen, etc

all because, in the eyes of white ppl, they aren”t apparently human enough to ‘own” their own ‘intellectual property”

like isn”t save wiyabi raising money right now because some college kids stole their idea and data? all while the college, the kids, and whatever are all clamouring to say that this is all ‘public” or something

but like,

ok.

so then we see wikimedia (the ppl who own wikipedia) making a straightfaced argument that a monkey owns the copyright of the image

despite the very reality that being Not A Human means that monkeys don”t actually have rights of any kind, copyright or otherwise

but Black women can”t get ppl to even cite them properly, much less respect their copyrights

but an Indigenous project doing a great service like Save Wiyabi can”t get credit for the important work they do….

lol ok

this is what white tech ppl literally think:

monkeys have more rights than marginalized ppl

and it is probably a good thing

that

NONE of us ever FORGET</p>