Linda L, Mountain View, CA: “I try to teach art…. How am I to demand originality from students when this kind of theft is commonplace? Many students come to the art classroom because they want to be creative, and then they proceed to copy if they can get away with it. Appropriation is a quick solution for them, but it does not nurture creative thought, which is hard work.”

...“What were Mr. Prince’s intentions in re-using the Rastafarian pictures taken by the French photographer Patrick Cariou and why did he choose them? For the sake of parody? For criticism? Or did he just pick something that inspired him, for reasons as difficult to plumb as any those of many postmodern artists?”...

“At another point in the transcript of the deposition, a lawyer asked, “What is the message?”

Mr. Prince replied, “The message is to make great art that makes people feel good.”

He also made it clear that he was not making art that commented on Mr. Cariou’s work itself. (Judge Batts ruled that for a work to be transformative it must “in some way comment on, relate to the historical context of, or critically refer back to the original works” it borrows from, a test she said Mr. Prince’s work failed.)

“It can’t just be random, that he ‘liked it,’ because there’s no practical boundary to that,” he said.”