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Publicity photos taken to promote film actors have traditionally not been copyrighted. According to Eve Light Honthaner in The Complete Film Production Handbook (2001),

Publicity photos have traditionally not been copyrighted. Since they are disseminated to the public, they are generally considered public domain, and therefore clearance by the studio that produced them is not necessary.

Creative Clearance offers similar advice, differentiating between "Publicity Photos (star headshots)" and "Production Stills (photos taken on the set of the film or TV show during the shooting)," noting that "newer publicity stills may contain a copyright," while "production stills must be cleared with the studio." Legal expert Nancy Wolff, in The Professional Photographer's Legal Handbook (2007), explains that

There is a vast body of photographs, including but not limited to publicity stills, that have no notice as to who may have created them." These photos, distributed by studios to promote new releases, have become valuable archival resources for publishers and collectors. Wolff writes, "These photographs came from a photo archive of entertainment industry publicity pictures, historic still images widely distributed by the studios to advertise and promote their then-new releases. While not considered valuable at the time, avid collectors have created complete archives by salvaging and cataloging movie and television photographs, preserving a significant facet of American culture. These archives are a valuable cache for publishers who rely on these archives as a resource for entertainment material.

Film industry author Gerald Mast, in Film Study and the Copyright Law (1989), discusses the 1989 copyright revisions. Mast explains,

According to the old copyright act, such production stills were not automatically copyrighted as part of the film and required separate copyrights as photographic stills. The new copyright act similarly excludes the production still from automatic copyright but gives the film's copyright owner a five-year period in which to copyright the stills. Most studios have never bothered to copyright these stills because they were happy to see them pass into the public domain, to be used by as many people in as many publications as possible.

Kristin Thompson, committee chairperson of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies, reported in a 1993 conference that cinema scholars and editors believed

It is not necessary for authors to request permission to reproduce frame enlargements... [and] some trade presses that publish educational and scholarly film books also take the position that permission is not necessary for reproducing frame enlargements and publicity photographs.