Clearly from the tone and content of this, we should regard this as a tentative opinion from someone who knows a lot about this stuff generally but who hasn't really researched this particular question in detail.

RMS currently advises against including things like album covers and movie box covers. While I don't think his opinion on that is authoritative, it's surely reason for us to pause to consider it.

----- Forwarded message from Richard Stallman rms@gnu.org -----

From: Richard Stallman rms@gnu.org Date: Sun, 03 Nov 2002 08:56:04 -0500 To: jwales@bomis.com Subject: Re: Wikipedia and GNU FDL "fair use" question

This is a harder question than I thought it was.

For small quotations from prose works, I think there is no problem. Such quotations are fair use in any context, even a commercial one, I believe.

Poetry is a different matter. I believe there was a ruling that quotations from poetry are never allowed as fair use. I think you simply cannot include any poetry. The situation for images is not exactly the same, but due to the reasons you stated, you probably should not include those record covers.

The GNU lawyers are overwhelmed with work, so I probably cannot find a lawyer to help with this. I will ask, though.

----- End forwarded message -----