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Fans of comedian-musician “Weird Al” Yankovic can download a new song for free from his website. The song is a parody of James Blunt’s “You’re Beautiful” entitled “You’re Pitiful.” Yankovic is making his version available online because it won’t be included on his forthcoming album, which is scheduled for release in September. Yankovic has built his career on parodying other artists’ songs, which he does only with the original artist’s permission. In this case, according to National Public Radio, Blunt gave Yankovic the okay to do the pardoy, but after it was recorded, another party objected:

Atlantic Records, Blunt’s label, told Yankovic that he couldn’t release “You’re Pitiful.” Though Yankovic has encountered resistance from artists before — after a miscommunication involving permissions, Coolio publicly objected to a released parody of “Gangsta’s Paradise,” while Prince has always turned down Yankovic’s requests to parody his hits — he says this is the first time a label has stepped in to squash the release of one of his parodies. (Quoth an Atlantic representative: “We have no comment on this matter.”)

So how, exactly, does a music label have a say in whether one of its artists can be parodied?

“The legality in this case is somewhat moot,” Yankovic writes when contacted via e-mail. “James Blunt could still let me put it on my album if he really wanted to, but he obviously doesn’t want to alienate his own record company… and my label could release the parody without Atlantic’s blessing, but they don’t really want to go to war with another label over this. So really, it’s more of a political matter than a legal matter.”

Parody has generally enjoyed wide protection from copyright infringement lawsuits, but so long as copyrights are enforced by the state, there are unfortunate gray areas. Yankovic’s parodies are elaborate and generally employ identical music to the original version. Does this make his songs “derivative” works under the copyright laws? If an artist, like Coolio, later decides he’s unappy with the parody version, can he sue for violating the artist’s “right of publicity,” which has been recognized by many courts?

Parody is of course a staple of many television shows and movies. But here, too, copyright issues create problems. For example, a 1992 episode of “The Simpsons” featured a Springfield community theater’s production of “A Streetcar Named Desire.” The original script called for a straightforward performance of the play. But when the estate of playwright Tennessee Williams refused permission, Simpsons writer Jeff Martin simply created a musical parody-version of the play (“Oh! Streetcar!”), which probably proved funnier than the play itself. Should the Williams estate have sued Martin and the Simpsons producers for creating an unauthorized “derivative” work?

(Incidentally, that episode caused trouble for a different reason. The opening number of the “Streetcar” musical featured a cast number mocking the city of New Orleans, a la the song “No Place Like London” from “Sweeney Todd.” A subsequent press-inspired uproar in New Orleans led the Simpsons to apologize and, via Bart Simpson, promise never to “defame the City of New Orleans” again.)

A common defense of copyright is that it protects the incentives for artists to create and market their works. But if anything, restrictions on parody and other “derivative works” only hurt the original artists as well as consumers. After all, a clever parody often creates interest in the original work. I know I’ve learned about a number of songs and movies based on references in “The Simpsons” or from “Weird Al” albums. Artists–and record labels–who try to restrict such parodies are cutting off a source of potential customers.

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