His New Profession

The film 'His New Profession' is a 1914 American silent short film starring Charlie Chaplin and produced by Mack Sennett's Keystone Film Company. Under current US copyright law (17 USC § 304), all works published or registered before January 1, 1929, have entered the public domain regardless of whether they were originally registered or renewed. Because this film was released in 1914, it passed its maximum statutory 75-year term (under the 1976 Act) and remained in the public domain during the 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, which only extended protections for works still under copyright as of 1999. It has been over 100 years since its publication, placing it definitively in the public domain.