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Summary
DescriptionChaplin the gold rush boot.jpg
Cropped publicity still for Charlie Chaplin's 1925 film The Gold Rush. The stock code in the left hand corner of the original confirms that this was a publicity still.
Such images were taken on set during filming, or as part of an organized photo-shoot, by a studio photographer. They were then disseminated to the media and the public to promote the film (see Film still).
It is unlikely that this image was secured with copyright protection, as stated by film industry expert Gerald Mast in Film Study and the Copyright Law (1989) p. 87:
"According to the old copyright act, such production stills were not automatically copyrighted as part of the film and required separate copyrights as photographic stills ... Most studios have never bothered to copyright these stills because they were happy to see them pass into the public domain, to be used by as many people in as many publications as possible."
If there is any chance that the photograph was copyrighted, under the terms of the 1909 Copyright Act (which was law until 1978) it would have had to be renewed 28 years after publication. Copyright renewal records for artwork in 1953 find no trace of any images from The Gold Rush: [1][2]
Public domain works must be out of copyright in both the United States and in the source country of the work in order to be hosted on the Commons. If the work is not a U.S. work, the file must have an additional copyright tag indicating the copyright status in the source country. Note: This tag should not be used for sound recordings.PD-1923Public domain in the United States//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chaplin_the_gold_rush_boot.jpg
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