Nguyễn Ngọc Loan executes Viet Cong Captain Nguyễn Văn Lém. This Associated Press photograph won the 1969 Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography. Film also exists of this event, but owing to the more graphic nature of the film, the photograph is more widely known.
The photo was published simultaneously in many newspapers, some of which had no copyright notice at all (neither for the photo in particular, nor for the newspaper as a whole). For example:
Copyright was therefore forfeited per section 9 of the Copyright Act of 1909, which required that notice of copyright be affixed to every published copy.
The "source country" is the "country which has the most significant contacts with the work". [1] Because the photograph was taken by a US photographer and first published in the United States, the United States is the source country.
Note that it may still be copyrighted in jurisdictions that do not apply the rule of the shorter term for US works (depending on the date of the author's death), such as Canada (50 p.m.a.), Mainland China (50 p.m.a., not Hong Kong or Macao), Germany (70 p.m.a.), Mexico (100 p.m.a.), Switzerland (70 p.m.a.), and other countries with individual treaties.