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Possible collections of Comic Covers?

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rmdavidson:
I don't know if this has been proposed before but would DCM accept collections of just comic book covers?  I'm thinking themes such as a particular artist or genre.

The reason I ask is because covers do not seem to be covered by copyright, hence their extensive use in reference books and price guides and the use here of covers on Green Hornet and Famous Funnies (Buck Rogers).  So would we be able to do a Wally Wood collection including EC covers?  Or a TV show cover collection?  Or a complete Tarzan comic cover collection?  Would this allow us to use covers beyond the 1959 cutoff?  I assume you wouldn't want to mess with the Marvel and DC superhero titles, but what about their non-superhero titles (DC did some movie and TV titles, for instance)?

Fans wouldn't even have to own the comics to do a collection.  They could pull them from various online resources like Heritage Auctions.

Can of worms, anybody?

John C:
A cover in a price guide would be Fair Use, and otherwise definitely would be covered by copyright.

rmdavidson:
This from the US Copyright Office website regarding Fair Use:

"Section 107 contains a list of the various purposes for which the reproduction of a particular work may be considered fair, such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Section 107 also sets out four factors to be considered in determining whether or not a particular use is fair.

1. The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes
2. The nature of the copyrighted work
3. The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole
4. The effect of the use upon the potential market for, or value of, the copyrighted work "

In the case of covers in a collection available at DCM, they would be for "nonprofit educational purposes," the cover being only a small portion of the complete copyrighted work, and would be considered for teaching, scholarship and research.  As to the effect on the potential market, DC and Marvel have done book collections of covers in the past but it is unlikely that other publishers would. 

Perhaps this is something that would have to be decided on an individual project basis.

John C:
My suspicion (not that I have any legal training) is that a judge would say that such a compilation would go head-to-head with possible products from the rights-holders, the cover is the book (or at least significant) to a surprising number of people, and just covers means there's nothing transformative to it, so pay up.

I try to stay out of policy decisions until specifically asked, but I don't see a project like this being on very sound footing if it ever got to court.

Plus, there are sites like the GCD that use the covers for identification purposes (definitely Fair Use), and linking to their page on the comic would probably be more useful to build around.

narfstar:
I would say to avoid EC or Street & Smith as well as DC and Marvel of course. If the covers were included like GCD no problem but to specifically collect them I would say would be.

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