Image:Stepbystep album cover.jpg

Album cover

Derived from a scan of the album cover (creator of this digital version is irrelevant as the copyright in all equivalent images is still held by the same party) Copyright held by the record company or the artist. Claimed as fair use regardless.

Step by Step (album)

Entire front cover, but does not include back or insides of original artwork or audio content on the album

Is only as much resolution is necessary to identify and show the style of artwork used for the article, not enough to be used for piracy. The copy of the image is low-resolution and will not produce high-quality copies of the art for illegal duplication. The quality is high enough to clearly present the image and to place the subject represented by the image in a good light.

It illustrates educational articles about the album from which the cover illustration was taken and identifies it by recognized features.

It is not replaceable with an uncopyrighted or freely copyrighted image of comparable educational value. A free image could not be created to replace it without itself being a derivative work.

Image in this form is already widely distributed to identify the album as part of catalogs and reviews, so we degrade no market value by providing it ourselves. Though this image is subject to copyright, its use is covered by the U.S. fair use laws for the reasons above and because:

1. It is a low resolution copy of an album cover, a small portion of the commercial product, and serves as an easily identifiable part of a larger entity.
2. The use of the cover will not affect the value of the original work or limit the copyright holder's rights or ability to distribute the original album, and may even increase the potential for the copyright owner to gain from the image.
3. The image is used as the primary means of visual identification of topics in the article. For an article about an album or artist, the cover artwork is very important and adds significantly to the educational article.