Page:Andy Warhol Foundation v. Goldsmith.pdf/36

30 The dissent commits the same interpretive error as AWF: It focuses on Campbell’s paraphrase, yet ignores the rest of that decision’s careful reasoning. Indeed, upon reading the dissent, someone might be surprised to learn that Campbell was about parody at all. Had expert testimony confirmed the obvious fact that 2 Live Crew’s “Pretty Woman” differed in aesthetics and meaning from Orbison’s original, that would have been the end of the dissent’s analysis. See (opinion of ). Not the Court’s, however. Campbell was the culmination of a long line of cases and scholarship about parody’s claim to fairness in borrowing. “For purposes of copyright law,” the Court explained, “the heart of any parodist’s claim to quote from existing material is the use of some elements of a prior author’s composition to create a new one that, at least in part, comments on that author’s works.” 510 U. S., at 580. Campbell thus drew a nuanced distinction between parody and satire: While parody cannot function unless it conjures up the original, “satire can stand on its own two feet and so requires justification for … borrowing.” Id., at 580–581. The objective meaning or message of 2 Live Crew’s song was relevant to this inquiry into the reasons for copying, but any “new expression, meaning, or message” was not the test.

What role meaning or message played in the Court of Appeals’ analysis here is not entirely clear. The court correctly