The Red Man's View

The film was directed by D.W. Griffith and released by the Biograph Company on December 9, 1909. Under the current US copyright framework, all works published or registered before January 1, 1928, have entered the public domain due to the expiration of their maximum copyright terms. At the time of its release, the film was subject to the Copyright Act of 1909, which granted an initial 28-year term and a 28-year renewal period. Even if the copyright had been perfectly maintained and extended by subsequent legislation (such as the 1976 Act and the 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act), the maximum 95-year protection period for works published in 1909 would have expired no later than the end of 2004. Consequently, there is no legal mechanism by which this film could still be under copyright protection in the United States.