Who exactly owns the rights to Ellen’s record-breaking Oscar
selfie?   posted Wednesday, March 5, 2014 at 1:59 PM EST
Ellen's selfie tweet from the Oscars was probably one of the
most memorable moments of the most recent Academy Awards—with
some of the most famed stars of the screen all squeezing into
one shot (helpfully sponsored by Samsung). The image rapidly
reached its goal of being the most retweeted image of all time,
now sitting at about 3.2 million retweets. But The Wire asks a
very interesting question—who exactly owns the rights to the
photo?  It seems Ellen Degeneres gave the AP the rights to send
the image down the wire—but were they even hers to give? Because
it turns out, copyright in this situation is actually extremely
confusing. Generally speaking, the copyright for an image
belongs to whoever pushes the shutter button—it doesn't matter
whose camera it is. So, in this case, seeing as it was Bradley
Cooper who held the phone and hit the button, the copyright
might belong to him.  Alternative