Lovers of offbeat music and hard-core rap would probably never use the names "Weird Al Yankovic" and "2 Live Crew" in the same sentence. Yet, they have something very important in common. The law protects their use of other people's musical works. The reason is that courts consider both 2 Live Crew's rap combined with pop music riffs and Weird Al's combination of everything... to be parodies, which are protected under fair use doctrine. from LegalZoom.com