Aren’t all silent films in the public domain?
A. No. Film copyright is an immensely complicated field, which people want to see simplified for their own advantage, inevitably. Firstly, there is more than one kind of right which can relate to a film – not just in the film itself, but in the literary rights, music rights, the rights in new intertitles etc. Rights also vary from territory to territory, and different countries have different laws, of course. And rights also vary according to whether you are talking about screenings, commercial releases, use of clips in other productions, etc. Moreover, films that were once out of copyright may have come back into copyright, owing to change in term decreed by new laws. For the USA, you can check through the Copyright Office databases, or consult with the Library of Congress. All films published in the USA to the end of 1922 are public domain in the USA, bar a handful of exceptions (but note that these films may have copyrighted elements, such as a new score). For a guide to USA copyrig
