a photo of a magazine cover in a wikipedia article might be allowable and within the allowed practices under copyright law under the basic premise that wikipedia exists for general information in substance wikipedia serves a journalism type mission existing to educate people a newspaper editor doing an article on somebody who is pictured on a magazine cover might include a photo of that magazine cover in essence use of the magazine cover is but component of the larger creation of intellectual work the borrowed use of the magazine cover does not serve to exist as a product by itself be it free or for a price contrarily there is other different use which could be a flagrant copyright infringement i cannot make poster prints of a magazine cover and sell them individually for in that case the image of the magazine cover becomes a commodity by itself for sale on the open market in that case i do not own the image and cannot use it in a commercial venture intellectual property which includes photos or the written word owned by some other person or corporate entity can possibly be allowed to be used where it exists as a minor component used to enhance a much larger piece of work marc s dania fl