Publication for the purposes of copyright is when a "discernable copy" or a "derivative copy" or a "tangible copy" has been distributed or viewed by the public. For a modern photograph the original creative work is the original camera negative (OCN), any print or duplicate of the OCN is a "discernable copy". The act of the photographer sending a copy to the person appearing in the image is the equivalent of publication for copyright purposes. This would not apply to daguerreotypes in which the positive on a metal plate is the original creative work, or images taken with an instant camera. Some negatives in collections may never have had a print distributed. For instance, the Library of Congress houses the Bain Collection original glass negatives, some of which may not have been printed and distributed. Up until 1976 distributed images needed to have a copyright notice. Images after 1977 no longer needed a visible copyright. Images without a copyright notice still had to register the copyright within 5 years of being made public.

This work is in the public domain because it was published in the United States between 1929 and 1963, and although there may or may not have been a copyright notice, the copyright was not renewed. For further explanation, see Commons:Hirtle chart and the copyright renewal logs. Note that it may still be copyrighted in jurisdictions that do not apply the rule of the shorter term for US works (depending on the date of the author's death), such as Canada (70 years p.m.a.), Mainland China (50 years p.m.a., not Hong Kong or Macao), Germany (70 years p.m.a.), Mexico (100 years p.m.a.), Switzerland (70 years p.m.a.), and other countries with individual treaties. العربية ∙ Deutsch ∙ English ∙ español ∙ français ∙ galego ∙ italiano ∙ 日本語 ∙ 한국어 ∙ македонски ∙ português ∙ português do Brasil ∙ русский ∙ sicilianu ∙ slovenščina ∙ українська ∙ 简体中文 ∙ 繁體中文 ∙ +/−