Parody and Copyright:

I’m delighted that Bill Patry, one of the leading copyright scholars in the nation — and the author of a treatise on fair use — has started The Patry Copyright Blog, which I’m sure will become a great source of news and opinion for people interested in copyright. The inaugural substantive post is particularly interesting — it’s about parody, copyright, the political valence of parodies, and “Yiddish with Dick and Jane” (which Bill didn’t much care for).

I don’t think I entirely agree with Bill’s analysis; in particular, I think the “compelled speech” argument for letting authors block copying is mistaken, for reasons I discussed at pp. 727-732 (PDF pages 31-36) of this article. But I still highly recommend the post.