I have seen many websites offering magazine subscriptions, displaying
the covers of the magazines.  For example, magazinecity.com or
magsonthenet.com.  Where do these websites acquire the cover images? 
Is there a service that provides the images on cd or via file
transfer?  If so, what is the name of the service(s) and how can I
contact them?

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Request for Question Clarification by bobbie7-ga on 07 Jul 2006 07:28 PDT

Hello,

I located a magazine dealer opportunity kit that sells for less than $1400.  

Some of the items included in this kit are magazine cover images,
pricing, and product descriptions.

Would this be of your interest?

Thank you, 
Bobbie7

Dear daver67,


You will find an archive of cover images for 1399 different magazines at
the following address. I prepared this archive from public web sources
using custom data-extraction tools of my own.

Magazine Covers
http://michaellaszlo.com/magcovers/


Downloading and unpacking the archive results in a directory with 25
subdirectories in which the cover images are sorted by magazine title. An
accompanying CSV file, which you can import into any spreadsheet, lists 
each title along with the file name of the corresponding image.


In case you are worried about legal strictures on the reproduction of
such images, rest assured that the use of thumbnail representations is
protected by fair-use doctrine. Although rights to commercial exploitation
of the original image may be reserved by the copyright holder, a small
derivative image may be freely used as a reference to the original.


    The size of a digital image has bearing on its fair use. SPIRO
    only displays thumbnail images on the World Wide Web. Thumbnails
    are limited to 125 x 125 pixels. At this size they can serve
    three similar purposes: reference images to actual slides; visual
    surrogates of objects; or visual citations to the contents of
    books and periodicals. Thumbnails can be downloaded, but are
    so small that there is nothing to steal or misappropriate. Even
    CONFU recognized that thumbnail images have no commercial value.

University of Texas: General Counsel: Digital Images and Fair Use Web Sites
http://www.utsystem.edu/ogc/intellectualproperty/portland.htm


    In 2003, the court in the US case Kelly v. Arriba Soft Corporation
    ruled that it was fair use for Internet search engines to
    use thumbnail images to help web users to find what they were
    looking for.

Wikipedia: Thumbnail
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thumbnail


I have found it an interesting challenge to answer your question. If you
have any concerns about the accuracy or completeness of my work, please
advise me through a Clarification Request and allow me the opportunity
to fully meet your needs before you rate this answer.

Regards,

leapinglizard


Search strategy:

magazine cover  [image search]
http://images.google.com/images?q=magazine%20cover

thumbnail fair use
://www.google.com/search?q=thumbnail+fair+use

Most of the images are supplied via specific publishers, such as Conde
Nast, or through distributors such as Publishers Clearinghouse or NYT
Media. The most reasonable way to collect these images woudl be
through a marketing aggrement with a publisher or distributor, or to
simply copy the images off of one of the sites you listed.

There is no pre-made cd with these images on them, unless you are
selling the magazines under contract, and then the cd would come from
the art department at the publishing house or distributor.

Hope that helps!

Thankyou I have been assisted by this answer.  I wonder though if the
researcher has not given away too much information about himself. I
did enjoy some of the stories on the researcher's website.