A few resources for writers who want to learn about law and publishing:

• My website, scrivenerserror.com (updated URL), has a number of links to relevant resources.
• The Copyright Office has recently revised Circular 92, the consolidated Copyright Act with amendments. I strongly recommend the PDF complete Act (1.4mb), as the individual chapters tend to be somewhat wonky in their formatting.
• The Supreme Court's opinion in Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc. (HTML, 73kb) (the 2Live Crew case) defines how parody fits into the fair use privilege in the copyright act.
• The Supreme Court's opinion in New York Times, Inc. v. Tasini (PDF, 130kb)(usually referred to as Tasini) discusses the limits of the publisher's "reprint" privilege, and is the foundation for the retroactive contracts grabbing electronic rights to past articles and stories—without any additional payment—that periodical publishers now are attempting to force upon authors.