Re: Fair Use & Magazine covers query

On Wed, Mar 17, 1999, Vivienne Dunlop <vivienne.dunlop[_at_]sagepub.co.uk> wrote:
>
> Can anyone advise on whether the reproduction of magazine covers
> within a scholarly journal article falls comfortably under the terms
> of fair use under US copyright law? We have an author who wants to
> use the covers of some well known US magazines to show how a news
> story was covered and images of a young girl used in the media. The
> photographs of the girl are unlikely to have been commissioned by the
> magazines in question (and may have been made available to the media
> by the family) and the article discusses the headlines and use of
> language made, as much as the images themselves. Publication would be
> in both print and electronic versions.
>
> The author has previously found magazines are very uncooperative when
> one is asking permission to use their material in this context! So she
> hopes that she will not have to secure a permission. The author views
> it as "texts" she is analysing, but to some extent, the figures could be
> seen to *illustrate* the points she is making in the article.

I think the UK position would be essentially the same as the Australian one - the test of "review or criticism" would be applied. Mere repeoduction without comment will definitely not be protected. A major book publisher here found that out to their cost: they had published a "Life of Brett" book some years previous. To update it, they inserted a few new images of paintings by Brett and then re-issued the book with no text amendments. They were sued by the estate which won, as there was no commentary about the images.

CS

"Galvanising Ideas"

Colin Seeger, Consultant, Management of Intellectual Property. P.O Box 3227, Tamarama, Sydney, Australia 2026 Tel: (61) (02) 9365 1186, Fax (61) (02) 9365 1286 <seeger[_at_]ozemail.com.au> Received on Thu Mar 25 1999 - 23:14:52 GMT