In The Right to Parody: Comparative Analysis of Free and Fair Speech, Amy Lai examines the right to parody as a natural right in free speech and copyright, proposes a legal definition of parody that respects the interests of rights holders and accommodates the public's right to free expression, and describes mechanisms to ensure that parody will best serve this purpose. Combining philosophical inquiry with robust legal analysis, the book draws upon examples from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, and Hong Kong. While it caters to scholars in intellectual property and constitutional law, as well as free speech advocates, it is written in a non-specialist language designed to appeal to any reader interested in how the boom in online parodies and memes relates to free speech and copyright.

Winner: Exceptional Scholarship Award, 2020 HxA Open Inquiry Awards, Heterodox Academy.

Winner, 2021 Franklyn S. Haiman Award for Distinguished Scholarship in Freedom of Expression, National Communication Association (NCA)

Winner, 2023 Voltaire Prize, Potsdam Universitat

For one thing, in the introduction Lai establishes the influence on the book of Robert Merges’s Justifying Intellectual Property (2011) and does an excellent job of delineating how she approaches a defense of parody through natural law theories.

Allen Reichert Source: Choice