Inspiration vs Infringement

[_ocelott_]

I don't often drop a link on you and step back, but I wanted to draw attention to one of the posts at Dear Author today, entitled Free Riding, Free Expression, and Familiarity in Genre Fiction. It's an excellent and thought provoking piece on derivative works, the legality of them, and the ethics of them. Where's the line between something that's a creative retelling and something that's a straight rip-off, between inspiration and infringement? Is either of them strictly legal? And in a way, isn't pretty well everything in genre fiction guilty of free riding on everything that's come before it, intentionally or not?

I highly recommend everyone take a look at Janet's thoughtful post. I've been chewing on it all day.