I think Wikipedia is engaging in monkeyshines! There would be no photograph without the photographer having his equipment there and the photos are his work-product. Ownership / copyright derives from mhos work-product.
Now if Wikipedia / Wikimedia can show spontaneous generation of photos without intelligent intervention, let them produce such as the counter-argument!
“Ownership / copyright derives from mhos work-product.”
Ownership and copyright are two different things. Copyright derives only from creative acts, not from all work in general:
“The Supreme Court decision in Feist v. Rural clarified the requirements for copyright in compilations. The Feist case denied copyright protection to a “white pages” phone book (a compilation of telephone numbers, listed alphabetically). In making this ruling, the Supreme Court rejected the “sweat of the brow” doctrine. That is, copyright protection requires creativity, and no amount of hard work (”sweat of the brow”) can transform a non-creative list (like an alphabetical listing of phone numbers) into copyrightable subject matter.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_the_United_States_of_America