Template talk:Non-free magazine cover

Removed "illustration" text
I just removed the following newly added text from this template: "* to illustrate the magazine's presentation of a topic directly relevant to an issue of public interest" I couldn't find any discussion regarding this change and it is not at all clear that this meets the Wikimedia Foundation's policy declaration on licensing and fair-use (here). It is also not at all clear that this fits into the legal requirements for fair-use, though Wikipedia of course has a much stricter guideline for acceptable use. --Yamla 16:34, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Apparently statement of this type of topic-related fair-use of a low-resolution magazine cover needs a clearer description and some standard US case law to back it up. This is something I don't have time to do at present, but will try to address later at WP:NFC if I can find the time. ... Kenosis 18:02, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
 * It's not primarily US case law, it's whether it meets the foundation's policy which is much more restrictive. --Yamla 18:19, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Sure, this isn't the first time around these parts for me. And WP is substantially more restrictive than the Board's March 2007 resolution.  Indeed, WP has gotten substanitally out of control in that some of its participants seek to have bulletproof rationales, where copyright law generally does not permit bulletproof rationales. It has thereby succeeded at the moment in denying itself the use of the vast majority of presently existing public domain material and other material squarely falling within both fair-use and indeed even the 10 NFCCs, at least within the set of interpretations hacked out in the past several months.  This, of course, after WP played itself to its donors with the catchy invitatioon to imagine what it would be like to have online access to all the information in the world. But this broader policy discussion will need to play out elsewhere, and I'll deal with this specific issue later, as I said, if I can find the time and with appropriate evidence in support. ... Kenosis 18:45, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia has no problem with public domain material. This falls entirely outside our fair-use guidelines.  --Yamla 20:14, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
 * That's a nice fantasy and I wish it were true. Unfortunately, WP presently is seriously deficient with respect to what the "image-management community" regards as public domain. With respect to worldwide standards, not much from the 20th century is being permitted at present. W.r.t. US standards, presently the interpretations are driven more by myths and misapprehensions of copyright law than they are by realistic, knowledgeable interpretations of the statuory and case law in the US. I trust that with time that will change, as WP policy wonks become more familiar with relevant statutory and case law.
 * Part of the problem at present is that no one has the right to confer "free license" upon anything in the public domain, and with the insistence of some advocates that WP be "only free content". Another part of the present problems is that images after 1923 are presumed to be under copyright, when in fact about 90% of the material originally registered with the Copyright Office between 1923 and 1963, and possibly over 99%, of the total material published between 1923 and 1963, is now in the public domain.  So the way the PD templates are written is based upon outright erroneous interpretation of copyright law.
 * Similarly, with fair-use and WP:NFCC, low resolution images of such things as book and magazine covers are normally fair-use for any purpose relating to conveying to readers a sense of what the copyright holders were publishing, period. This is as differentiated from taking the material from within a copyrighted book or magazine and using it in a way that would create a situation where no one would need to buy the product in order to avail themselves of the content. And even the NFCC are not the issue in this case; the issue here is what WP users decided to write into the present template for "non-free magazine cover", an interpretation which is based, as I said, upon misinterpretations either of fair-use case-law, or of the NFCC, or both. There are other issues w.r.t. both public domain and fair-use/fair-dealing, but I don't have adequate time to get into them right now.
 * At present, it is actually easier for people to misrepresent free-licenses in WP than it is to include useful encyclopedic material that is in the public domain, or low-resolution images under fair-use/NFCC. While I understand and respect the desire to be cautious, IMO it would better serve the project in both the short term and the long term if templates and other criteria were based a little more on fact and a little less on myth. ... Kenosis 21:02, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Specific versus general uses of magazine covers
Please seee Wikipedia talk:Non-free content for a discussion of specific versus general uses of magazine covers. Carcharoth (talk) 01:08, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

“a point about the publication”?
The present statement of the template is that magazine covers could be used in case of direct illustration of a point about the publication of the image. Could some one explain exactly what "a point" and "the publication" mean, they're so vague. Can an image of a magazine cover with a celebrity on it be used for the article of that person, as he makes the magazine more appealing which raise up its publication at the same time? -- Symane  TALK  04:37, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 29 January 2020
This template can be switched to use Uploader information if a change in the structure of the bulleted list is acceptable; I've drafted a new version of the template at Template:Non-free magazine cover/sandbox. Yes, I know I can edit this template myself, but I'd like at least one other person agreeing. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 11:28, 29 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes check.svg Done —&thinsp;JJMC89&thinsp; (T·C) 03:44, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 17 May 2021
Please update from the sandbox which moves Non-free media into the imbox, this allows license metadata to be properly emitted because the imbox is set to type license, which sets class  to the imbox, however Non-free media was not placed in the imbox so the metadata was not being detected. Dylsss(talk contribs) 23:09, 17 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes check.svg Done Elli (talk &#124; contribs) 08:55, 18 May 2021 (UTC)