>It should be about who got the camera there and set it up, not who pushed the button. With automated recording (dashcams), there isn't even "a button".

I'm actually having a bit of trouble thinking of what sufficient societal good there is/would be in granting copyright on raw dashcam or security camera or the like footage? None of those purely mechanical automated systems need a subsidy or encouragement to generate more. Certainly someone can use that sort of thing in the creation of a copyrighted work but what would be the issue with the underlying material in that case being unprotected?

I am in favor of copyright reform so eventually it becomes something like two years automatic with a one time two year extension possible an I agree with you because of one key word — raw. Once the footage is used in a package, be it a movie, a news report, or a music video, that package can be copyrighted. The problem is there is no way the owner of a dashcam can prohibit commercial use of a video they own if it cannot be copyrighted in the US. In a way, we have conflated copyrights with other so called intellectual property (details). Maybe the solution is to strengthen privacy rights somehow? I'm not sure.

Details https://ftp5.gwdg.de/pub/gnu/www/philosophy/words-to-avoid.h...

Thinking more about monkeys, I think that case was made relatively easy because there was a normal living recipient for copyright, but that wasn't eligible for such. I'm fairly certain that dashcam footage, which is 100% automated, as you mention, is copyrighted by default. It's a fairly common source of footage of novel events like a meteorite, rocket impact, or whatever else. And that footage is licensed to media companies.

In any case, any country that decides neural network generated media isn't copyrighted then faces a major, and probably impossible, problem of trying to prove it wasn't made by a human.

A dashcam could be a safety tool for most people, but it could also be a strategically placed B-cam for a videographer on a shoot.

For what it’s worth, dashcam footage can absolutely be copyrightable.

The ruling is more about “only humans can get copyright protection”, not so much anything about whether a button is pressed or not.

There is a spark of creativity in the monkey case that very often doesn’t apply to dashcam footage