About Public Domain Greats

A film can lose its copyright ownership (1) if it was released before 1923 (thus, all of Melies' films, and most of Griffith's); (2) if the owner failed to renew the copyright: this applies, because of a court ruling, only to movies released before 1964 (most of the 1923-63 films entered the public domain in this way); (3) if the film was produced by the U.S. government (e.g. Nazi Concentration Camps); and, lastly, if the film was released without a copyright notice somewhere within the work (as with Night of the Living Dead). In 2019 all copyrighted films released in 1923 will become public domain; in 2020 all films released in 1924 will, and so forth.