One of our authors wanted to include an illustration created by Guy Debord in his 1958 book, The Naked City. After I inquired about permissions for the image (which had been scanned from the book), she said she wanted to make a fair use claim for its use. From her research, she could find no rights holders credited for Debord's work in any publications. Additionally, Debord published most of his writing with the preface "All texts published in Situationist International may be freely reproduced, translated and edited, even without crediting the original source.

After consulting with her editor, we advised her to drop the Debord image. We told her that, after reviewing her essay, we didn't feel she was analyzing the image enough to claim fair use. The note that appears in the preface to his works didn’t seem applicable since she wanted to use an illustration, not a text. Reading through her manuscript, we also didn't feel that the image was crucial to her argument. She was talking about a series of demonstrations in Paris, and only including the image for comparison. We asked her to rewrite the end of the paragraph that mentioned the image so that it could be described but not included. We also thought that the image was well-known enough that readers would probably be familiar with it or able to search for it online.

Our author said she would be happy to agree with our request that she drop the Debord illustration. She was able to revise the paragraph that referred to the image quite easily by changing two words, adding a “for example,” and dropping the figure reference.