Not that I would do this, but it might be fun to see someone stick something like this in a backpack and walk past an Apple store.

From WeirdAl's website:

Does Al get permission to do his parodies?

Al does get permission from the original writers of the songs that he parodies. While the law supports his ability to parody without permission, he feels it’s important to maintain the relationships that he’s built with artists and writers over the years. Plus, Al wants to make sure that he gets his songwriter credit (as writer of new lyrics) as well as his rightful share of the royalties.

Also, the WIkipedia Article on Parody which states that parody is "a work created to imitate, make fun of, or comment on an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of satiric or ironic imitation." Note that the definition is more than just making a comment on a work or its author ("some other target").

Later in that article, Copyright is discussed. While the Seuss case is mentioned, so is Suntrust v. Houghton Mifflin which "upheld the right of Alice Randall to publish a parody of Gone with the Wind called The Wind Done Gone, which told the same story from the point of view of Scarlett O'Hara's slaves, who were glad to be rid of her."

Parody doesn't need to make a comment on the original work. If I made a "Wrecking Ball" parody song and altered the lyrics to target a politician I didn't agree with, Miley Cyrus couldn't come after me for copyright infringement because my song would clearly be a parody work. Weird Al asks for permission first because he's polite, not because he needs to.

As Weird Al's song is clearly parody, it would fall into an exemption in copyright law. They could no more sue him for copyright infringement than JK Rowling could sue SNL for a Harry Potter sketch.

Before 9/11, terrorism was some nebulous thing that happened in some far off land. It was sad to watch on the evening news but then you changed the channel to a sitcom and everything was alright again.

Right after 9/11, the horrors of terrorism came up close and we couldn't ignore them. This, in itself, is fine. The problem was that these people saw that we were scared and jumped in promising to stop terrorism. All they needed in return was a little of this liberty - just a little bit - we wouldn't even notice it was gone. We quickly agreed in our panicked state - shouting down the minority who said it was a bad idea by yelling "Are you taking THE TERRORISTS side? Are you with THEM?!!! DO YOU HATE AMERICA?!!!!!"

Slowly, we began to come to our senses, but were still on edge enough to be scared into approving anything if the politician said "Terrorism" enough times.

Hopefully, by now, we've regained enough sanity that we can a) smack around any politician who tries to claim that removing liberty will prevent terrorism and b) start the long, hard process of getting back the liberty we were scared into giving up years ago.

Actually, you don't have the right to spread germs around willy-nilly because you don't feel like taking basic precautions. Look up the tale of Typhoid Mary. Despite being a carrier of Typhoid, she refused to take basic steps to stop spreading the disease (since she didn't agree with those steps). After people died, she was locked up so she couldn't infect anyone else.

why should parents be allowed to force anything on their children?

Answering as a parent: Because young kids are really bad at making long term choices. If I let my 2nd grader decide all the foods he ate, he would live on a diet of pizza, cookies, McDonald's chicken nuggets*, and macaroni and cheese. Perhaps he would occasionally eat a piece of fruit. Instead, I prompt him to eat veggies that he declares gross before even trying them - but which he'll often love after eating them. If it were solely up to him, my 2nd grader would grow up with horrible eating habits. It's my job as a parent to force good eating habits on him in the near-term, teach him why good eating habits are important, so in the long term - when he's old enough to make these decisions himself - he'll eat healthy.

* We have McDonald's on an extremely rare basis. One meal from there a month is a lot for us. I have no problem with the occasional fast food meal, but it definitely shouldn't be a regular part of your diet.

Getting back to vaccines, keeping the law from imposing rules upon religions is fine, but when the action (not vaccinating) leads to people dying, then the religion doesn't get to claim freedom of religion. It doesn't hurt anybody if I don't eat ham/bacon because it's not kosher. It's not like I'm banning everyone else from eating it. (In fact, if I'm eating with someone and my food comes with bacon, I might ask that they get my bacon. Win for both of us.) But not vaccinating your child because of "religious reasons" means that you are putting your child and any other child your child comes in contact with in harm's way. You wouldn't get the fire a gun randomly in a crowd and claim "freedom of religion" and you shouldn't get to not vaccinate and claim "religious freedom."

And what about kids who are exposed to vaccine preventable diseases before they are old enough to get the vaccine?

And what about the kids who have medical conditions (allergies, immune system issues) that mean they can't be vaccinated?

And what about kids who are vaccinated but whose vaccines don't "take"? (The vast majority do work, but some don't.)

If all other kids are vaccinated? These kids will be fine because herd immunity will protect them. There will be so many vaccinated kids that diseases won't be able to find their way to the vulnerable ones.

#4 is why the anti-vaccine movement was able to grow. The anti-vaxxers said "You don't really need the vaccines. Just wash your hands real well or take HOMEOPATHIC REMEDY and you'll never get whooping cough," Sure enough, they didn't get whooping cough, but the reason wasn't washing hands (though that is important) or homeopathic remedies (which isn't good for anything). It was because the anti-vaxxers were few enough that they were protected by herd immunity. Even though they weren't getting the vaccines, they were still enjoying vaccines' protection.

But then the anti-vaxxer ranks grew and herd immunity began to break down. Now we're starting to see outbreaks of diseases that, by all rights, should be lining up behind smallpox for inclusion in the "wiped out" club.

There may not have been any public demands by the content industry

That's because the demands were copyrighted and not in the public domain!

Exactly this. Soon, everyone will slowly move to the "US Standard" of 95 years except for one country who will go with 110 years. Then we'll need to move to that to harmonize our copyright terms... except for that one country that enacted 130 years. Infinity Minus One copyright terms, here we come!

The other problem is orphaned works. Take a random video game from the 80's and try to find who owns the rights to it now. Unless it was a big name company at the time, you're likely to have to navigate through a thicket of legal acquisitions, sales, bankruptcy proceedings, etc. It can be an extremely challenging effort just to find out who owns a work published 30+ years ago.

Now imagine that it is 2095 and you want to publish a "classic" from 2015. How would you track down the rightful owner over 80 years?!!

I'd like to see a renewal system in place. Ideally with limited renewals (e.g. 2 renewals and you're done) or ever-increasing renewal fees (e.g. $5 for first renewal, $50 for 2nd renewal, $500 for 3rd, etc.). This way, you would not only have a public record of who owns what, but you would force companies to either give up their unused works or pay more for them. Maybe Star Wars is worth renewing for a 10th time, but is RANDOM_CULT_HIT_FROM_1975?

IP does not exist. It's a figment of our collective imagination.

Exactly this. When copyright was at a sane length, the reason for it was so you didn't release a work and have that work immediately re-released by a dozen shady publishers who didn't give you a dime for your efforts. When something like that happened, it was a serious threat to creativity. After all, why work for years writing a great novel just to have six publishing companies steal it, print their own editions of it, and not give you any money for it. Worse, their editions would compete with your own edition and you would be making less sales/money as people bought the "wrong" edition.

The balance to this, though, was that your temporary monopoly only lasted a short time. After 14 years (28 years if you filed for a one-time extension), your work went into the public domain and almost all bets were off. You still couldn't republish it and attribute it to someone else, but you could write a sequel or base another work on it without the original author's consent.

This went fine for the most part until copyright holders saw the works entering the public domain and envisioned dollar signs leaving their pockets so they got the copyright terms extended again and again until they are, for all intents, perpetual. If a work is created today, is corporate-owned (so we don't get into "life of the author", and the terms aren't extended again (the latter being a big IF), my 8 year old has only the slimmest of chances of seeing that work in the public domain. (He would need to live to 103.) If he has a child at 25, my grandchild would see the work in the public domain when he turns 78.

I know we love extolling thinking long term, but what possible incentive does it give knowing that a work you create in 2015 will only enter the public domain in 2110?!!!

The best thing that can be said about Blurred Lines is that the Weird Al parody of it was fantastic.