This is a copyrighted image that has been released by a company or organization to promote their work or product in the media, such as advertising material or a promotional photo in a press kit.
The copyright for it is most likely owned by the company who created the promotional item or the artist who produced the item in question; you must provide evidence of such ownership. Lack of such evidence is grounds for deletion.
It is believed that the use of some images of promotional material to illustrate:
- the person(s), product, event, or subject in question
- where the image is unrepeatable, i.e. a free image could not be created to replace it
- on the English-language Wikipedia, hosted on servers in the United States by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation,
qualifies as fair use under United States copyright law. Any other usage of this image, on Wikipedia or elsewhere, might be copyright infringement. See Wikipedia:Non-free content and Wikipedia:Publicity photos.
Additionally, the copyright holder may have granted permission for use in works such as Wikipedia. However, if they have, this permission likely does not fall under a free license.
Please note that our policy usually considers fair use images of living people that merely show what they look like to be replaceable by free-licensed images and unsuitable for the project. If this is not the case for this image, a rationale should be provided proving that the image provides information beyond simple identification or showing that this image is difficult to replace by a free-licensed equivalent. Commercial third-party reusers of this image should consider whether their use is in violation of the subject's publicity rights. |
