You can reproduce entire copyrighted images!

In 2006, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2d Circuit ruled that the reproduction of Grateful Dead posters owned by the Bill Graham Archives (owners of the poster reproduced to the right) in a book about the Grateful Dead constituted non-infringing fair use of the images. The reproductions, obviously, were substantially smaller than the posters themselves and therefore in no way could be used as substitutes for the posters. Moreover, they were being to illustrate the history of the Dead, plainly a use that we would want to encourage in biographical work.

Last week, in a similar ruling,  Warren Publishing Co. v. Spurlock, a federal court similarly ruled that a recently published book, Famous Monster Movie Art of Basil Gogos, a history of the work of a man whose paintings of movie monsters appeared on numerous magazine covers, did not violate the copyrights owned by the publishers of those magazines.

Reproductions in books of posters and magazine images are fair use. So, by the way, are reproductions on postage stamps of photographs of copyrighted public scuptures.

Hat tip to techdirt.