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20  ANDY WARHOL FOUNDATION FOR VISUAL ARTS, INC. 

v. GOLDSMITH 
KAGAN, J., dissenting 

rids the term of most of its ordinary meaning.  “Character” 
typically  refers  to  a  thing’s  “main  or  essential  nature[,] 
esp[ecially] as strongly marked and serving to distinguish.” 
Webster’s  Third  376;  see  supra,  at  13.  The  essential  and 
distinctive nature of an artist’s use of a work commonly in-
volves  artistry—as  it  did  here.  See  also  Campbell,  510 
U. S., at 582, 588–589 (discussing  the expressive “charac-
ter” of 2 Live Crew’s rap).  So the term “character” makes 
significant everything the record contains—and everything
everyone (save the majority) knows—about the differences 
in expression and meaning between Goldsmith’s photo and
Warhol’s silkscreen. 

Second, the majority significantly narrows §107(1)’s ref-
erence to “purpose” (thereby paralleling its constriction of
“character”).  It might be obvious to you that artists have
artistic purposes.  And surely it was obvious to the drafters
of a law aiming to promote artistic (and other kinds of ) cre-
ativity.  But  not  to  the  majority,  which  again  cares  only
about  Warhol’s  decision  to  license  his  art.  Warhol’s  pur-
pose,  the  majority  says,  was  just  to  “depict  Prince  in  [a] 
magazine  stor[y]  about  Prince”  in  exchange  for  money. 
Ante, at 12–13.  The majority spurns all that mattered to 
the artist—evident on the face of his work—about “expres-
sion, meaning, [and] message.”  Campbell, 510 U. S., at 579; 
Google, 593 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 24).  That indifference 
to  purposes  beyond  the  commercial—for  what  an  artist,
most fundamentally, wants to communicate—finds no sup-
port in §107(1).7 
—————— 

7 The  majority  seeks  some  statutory  backing  in  what  it  describes  as
§107’s reference to the “specific ‘use’ ” of a work “alleged to be ‘an infringe-
ment.’ ”  Ante, at 20; see also ante, at 2, 4 (GORSUCH, J., concurring).  Be-
cause  the  challenged  use  here  is  a  licensing  (so  says  the  majority),  all 
that matters is that Goldsmith engaged in similar commercial transac-
tions.  But the majority is both rewriting and splicing the statute.  The 
key  part  of  the  statute  simply  asks  whether  the  “use made  of  a  [copy-
righted] work” is fair.  (The term “alleged infringement,” which the ma-
jority banks on, nowhere exists in the text; indeed, all the statute says