Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/21-869_87ad.pdf
Page Number: 72

Cite as:  598 U. S. ____ (2023) 

21 

KAGAN, J., dissenting 

Still more, the majority’s commercialism-über-alles view 
of the factor 1 inquiry fits badly with two other parts of the
fair-use provision.  To begin, take the preamble, which gives
examples  of  uses  often  thought  fair:  “criticism,  comment,
news  reporting,  teaching[,]  . . .  scholarship,  or  research.” 
§107.  As we have explained, an emphasis on commercial-
ism would “swallow” those uses—that is, would mostly de-
prive them of fair-use protection.  Campbell, 510 U. S., at 
584.  For the listed “activities are generally conducted for 
profit  in  this  country.”  Ibid.  (internal  quotation  marks 
omitted).  “No man but a blockhead,” Samuel Johnson once 
noted, “ever wrote[ ] except for money.”  3 Boswell’s Life of 
Johnson 19 (G. Hill ed. 1934).  And Congress of course knew 
that when it drafted the preamble. 

Next, skip to the last factor in the fair-use test: “the effect
of the use upon the potential market for or value of the cop-
yrighted work.”  §107(4).  You might think that when Con-
gress  lists  two  different  factors  for  consideration,  it  is  be-
cause the two factors are, well, different.  But the majority 
transplants factor 4 into factor 1.  Recall that the majority
conducts  a  kind  of  market  analysis:  Warhol,  the  majority 
says,  licensed  his  portrait  of  Prince  to  a  magazine  that
Goldsmith  could  have  licensed  her  photo  to—and  so  may 
have  caused  her  economic  harm.  See  ante,  at  22–23;  see 
also ante, at 19 (focusing on whether a follow-on work is a
market “substitute” for the original); ante, at 4 (GORSUCH, 
J.,  concurring)  (describing  the  “salient  point”  as  whether
Warhol’s  “use  involved  competition  with  Ms.  Goldsmith’s 
—————— 
about infringement, and in a separate sentence, is that a fair use doesn’t 
count as one.)  The statute—that is, the actual one—thus focuses atten-
tion  on  what  the  copier  does  with  the  underlying  work.    So  when  the 
statute more particularly asks (in factor 1) about the “purpose and char-
acter  of  the  use”—meaning  again,  the  “use  made  of  [the  copyrighted] 
work”—it is asking to what end, and with what result, the copier made 
use of the original.  And that necessarily involves the issue of transfor-
mation—more  specifically  here,  how  Warhol’s  silkscreen  transformed 
Goldsmith’s photo.