Fair Use.....and welcome back Kathy Sierra

I don't know if you've been following the Richter Scales / Lane Hartwell saga, but this post by Kathy Sierra on Tara Hunt's blog, articulates my views on this issue very well:

While accepting Lane's right to earn a living via selling her IP and keeping it fully copyrighted, and her similar thoughts re her book, Kathy notes:

On the other hand, there are probably a zillion things in my books which have been at the least inspired by things (examples, metaphors, ideas, etc.) which were often in the copyrighted work of others (standing on the shoulders of giants and all that). The more difficult it is to build on the work of others, the less progress we make. Giving credit seems like an easy thing to do until/unless you’re in a situation where it becomes “credits all the way down.” So things like what Lane is doing could contribute–as others have suggested– to the ‘chilling effect.’

Kathy also makes a very insightful point re the path Fair Use has taken in recent times:

On the third hand, I also see a huge inconsistency and in some cases hypocrisy or double-standard over what constitutes fair use. We incent/reward/encourage the use of someone’s work as long as it’s used to mock/criticize the creator (especially someone we don’t agree with), but we discourage/punish the use of someone’s work to create something new. It’s almost as though the legal and ethical encouragement of fair use becomes, “if you can’t say something mean, don’t say anything at all (with that person’s work).”

And nails the general case worries as opposed to the specific:

I think there are a lot of folks who agree with her about deserving attribution (especially after requesting it) in this particular case but disagree with what she did in general because they are worried about the issue on a meta level.

Kathy, you have to start blogging again !

Update.....Lane Hartwell has put up some more details of her pov here: