On Sun, 24 Feb 2008 01:00:10 +0100, Eugene van der Pijll eugene@vanderpijll.nl wrote:
WJhonson@aol.com schreef:
That has not been the actual experience. "Reasonable" is an added herring. Fair use is fair use. Book covers should be allowed to be used, without restriction. All book covers are fair use.
ITYM All book covers are fair use on an article about the book itself. Which is probably true; I can't really think of a counterexample. But that does not mean you can use the image without restriction; a fair use claim always refers to the exact use we make of it.
Can you point us at book covers that were tagged as fair use, used on an article about the book, and still were deleted?
There are plenty of counterexamples actualy. Quite a few old "clasics" have first edition covers that have lapsed into the public domain. In such cases it would not be apropriate to use a still copyrighted cover for a more recent reprint of the book for ilustrative purposes.
Also creating large galleries of various alternate covers for different versions/translations of the book wold not be considered apropriate (people tried this with varios Harry Potter books for example), even in the article about the book. So no, all book covers are not automaticaly fair use even in the article about said book. It still needs to be used in a very spesific way, and then only if there is no free alternative (wich I'll grant there rarely is for contemporary books).