Spies and Spills

Spies and Spills is a silent short film directed by and starring Larry Semon, released on January 14, 1918, by the Vitagraph Company of America. Under current U.S. copyright law, all works published before January 1, 1929, have entered the public domain due to the expiration of the maximum statutory copyright term. Because the film was published in 1918, its copyright protection expired 75 years after publication (under the 1976 Act) or, more simply, it fell into the public domain on January 1, 1994. The 1998 Copyright Term Extension Act (Sony Bono Act) did not apply retrospectively to works already in the public domain at that time. Therefore, the film is definitively in the public domain in the United States.