It’s highly unlikely that a court would agree with Computeractive that your use of their cover was copyright infringement. It’s easy to argue fair use. You copied only a small part of Computeractive’s work. You copied only the minimum necessary to support your argument. Blanking out sections of the cover would lead a reader to wonder what had been removed, and may have cast Computeractive in an even worse light.

What’s the difference between a scan and a photograph? As far as copyright infringement goes, not a lot. The new photo is at a fractionally lower resolution. If the scan had been at a similar resolution, would that have been ok?

(It’s strange that Computeractive didn’t like the free advertising. PCPro seem to be pointing out that Computeractive’s magazine contains similar material at only £1.50, compared with PCPro’s cover price of £4.99.)