body: The International Boundary Commission is a permanent international organization headed by two commissioners: a Canadian and an American. In 1924 it distributed to the public its Report, which contained many photographs that were its own work. The report contains no copyright notice.
  
  
  The Commission's web site [contains this paragraph](http://internationalboundarycommission.org/en/privacy.php):
  
  
  
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  > Permission to reproduce Commission works, in part or in whole, and by any means, for personal or public non-commercial purposes, or for cost-recovery purposes, is not required, unless otherwise specified in the material you wish to reproduce.
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  I'm wondering about usability of these photographs in Wikipedia articles. As nearly as I understand it, Wikipedia's policy says works uploaded to Wikipedia that are not in the public domain must be subject to a license allowing anyone to use them subject only to the condition that authorship and copyright ownership must be acknowledged. [Here is Wikipedia's policy on this.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Image_use_policy)
  
  
  * Are any claims to copyright forfeited by public distribution without a copyright notice?
  * Would copyrights have expired?
  
  
  PS: [Here](ftp://ftp.nrcan.gc.ca/pub/outgoing/IBC_CFI) is the 512-page report.
  
  
  **Postscript on August 23, 2021:** The one current answer does not seem to take into account that the U.S. federal government is not the author, but is merely one of the publishers, of this work (the International Boundary Commission is the author) and also does not explain how Canadian law does or does not apply here. That is why I have started a bounty here.
  
  
  
title: Copyright status of photographs published in 1924 by, and created by, the International Boundary Commission