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In short, Wikipedia media (with the exception of "fair use" media—see below) should be as "free" as Wikipedia's content—both to keep Wikipedia's own legal status secure and to allow as much re-use of Wikipedia content as possible. For example, Wikipedia can accept images under CC-BY-SA (Attribution-Share Alike) as a free license, but not CC ...
Some non-free images may be used on Wikipedia, providing they meet both the legal criteria for fair use, and Wikipedia's own guidelines for non-free content. Non-free images that reasonably could be replaced by free content images are not suitable for Wikipedia. All non-free images must meet each non-free content criterion; failure to meet ...
Non-free currency}} —for images of the official currency of a country that may be copyrighted. {{Non-free stamp}} —for images of postage stamps that may be copyrighted. {{Non-free stamp of Canada}} —for images of Canadian stamps issued in 1958 or later. {{Non-free stamp of India}} —for images of Indian stamps issued in 1948 or later.
The non-free use you're proposing is bascially a WP:DECORATIVE type of non-free use, and it's not really considered policy-compliant to use non-free images in list articles or in a list-, a gallery- or a table-like display per WP:NFLIST and WP:NFTABLE simply to show what one of a group of entries looks like. If the rationale you posted above ...
Also, if the work is not yours but the author made a statement releasing it into the public domain, it is recommended (but not required) that you contact them to see if they'll additionally make a statement releasing all rights. If so, add a free-use license tag as well. The free-use tags that have been created for user contributions are:
The current guidelines for non-free content on Wikipedia, though written about at length on various project pages, does not seem to translate well into actual practice: many images are labeled as "fair use" without any deliberation, and many such images labeled would probably not be judged as "fair use" in a court of law.
In particular, the policy states All other uses, even if legal under the fair use clauses of copyright law, should be avoided to keep the use of unfree images to a minimum. Thus, even if your use of a fair use tagged image would be legal under copyright law, it is not allowed under Wikipedia policy.
Correct misinterpretations of free images. One of the main complaints about free images is lack of quality when compared with a promotional images. That is not true: there are very good free images as shown by Wikipedia:Featured pictures. In the case of replaceable images, it is possible that a promotional image will look better than free versions.