Let me clarify. From Baio's original blog post: My lawyers and I firmly believe that the pixel art is "fair use" As a courtesy, I am taking his word for this

Let me clarify. From Baio's original blog post: My lawyers and I firmly believe that the pixel art is "fair use" As a courtesy, I am taking his word for this as well as assuming that he held the same belief before the legal trouble. Given that assumption, we can blame him for making risky assumptions himself and for not contacting a lawyer to make sure, but we cannot blame him for doing "a minimum" of asking permission when he didn't believe that he was using the image in a way that required that minimum.