A month or so ago a website was sent to the students of BYU pertaining to copyright and copyright infringement. The site provided an in depth, detailed, but easily understood crash course on what is and what isn't in violation of a person(s)/company's copyright. After looking over the list very closely, I came to determine that AMVs are not copyright violations, and any AMVer would have a substantial defense in a court of law (at least, according to this "official" website). However, it was quite obvious that anyone who does not legally own the source of the creative work (i.e. the anime footage) has little defense other than that their AMV is "for the sake of parody".
Just a note, even tho its quite late in the posting
I miss Cali! All this rain! Why isn't there a BYU in CA?