Supreme Court on Parody

I feel encouraged that the Supreme Court unanimously reversed in _Campbell v. Acuff-Rose_, but I am troubled by the nature of the remand. The Court believed that a parody can be a fair use even if it destroys the market for the original work, simply because that's the nature of parody and criticism. Why, then, should the Court remand for consideration of the effect of the parody on both the market for the existing work and for derivative works? Just as a parody could eviscerate, with impunity, the market for the original work, a parody could equally destroy the market for derivative works. In other words, why should the effect on the market matter if the work is found to truly be a parody?

Seth Greenstein
<sethg[_at_]access.digex.net> Received on Tue Mar 08 1994 - 15:39:41 GMT