The Massacre

The film 'The Massacre', directed by D.W. Griffith, was produced in 1912 and received its primary release in the United States around 1914. Under U.S. copyright law, specifically the Copyright Act of 1976 and the subsequent Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, all works published or registered before January 1, 1928, have entered the public domain regardless of renewal status. Because the film was released well before the 1928 cutoff, its statutory copyright term has expired. There is no requirement to search for renewal records (CCE or Stanford) as the maximum possible protection for a 1912/1914 work would have ended no later than 95 years after publication, placing it definitively in the public domain by 2010 at the latest.