Just when you thought all news about the fight for fair use was bad news, we have two exercises in parody to brighten the day:

Zippy the Pinhead goes "Totally Jeffersonian" in a strip on "wacko" exceptions to copyright. (Ah, no, I can't explain it; you'll just have a to take a look for yourself.)

Meanwhile, the fearless folks @ Free Culture have announced "Barbie-in-a-Blender Day" -- celebrating an instance in which an artist made it to the courtroom to fight for fair use and won:

Mattel isn't a big fan of free speech -- at least not when it applies to their products. So when Utah artist Tom Forsythe took this photograph of Barbie in a blender as part of a series of critical fine-art Barbie photos, Mattel got pissed. So what did they do to try stop Tom's message? They decided to sue his ass. Usually, a guy like this would have no chance going up against a fleet of corporate lawyers; and from the corporation's perspective, that's the whole point...Luckily for Tom, he convinced some lawyers from the ACLU to step up to and fight his case, and after a long legal battle he was victorious.