How long does copyright last? A long time. I did some reading on it and there are four or five laws that may apply -- depending on when the material was created and/or published (but increasingly restrictive in favor of the copyright owner, if I remember correctly) -- and with different lengths of time that the material is protected. The bottom line, as far as I was concerned, is that anything published before 1923 is in public domain and may be reproduced without permission. If 1923 or later, it may be protected, depending; probably is. Unpublished material can be protected even further back, like to the 1880s. It's complex lawyer stuff, but you can bet that any image you're going to run into of Buk (photo, art work), is probably protected and can't be used without the permission of the rights owner.