Brooklyn Law School’s BLIP clinic teaches the art of the (legal) remix
The saying is, “art imitates life,” but when art imitates other art, conflicts over ownership ensue, and intellectual property laws are left to sort out the mess.
Most people know that the purpose of United States copyright law is to protect an individual artist’s ability to reap the financial rewards of their creative labor. What is sometimes lost amid the many stories of monetary damages for copyright infringement is the other purpose of intellectual property law, which is to preserve the public’s liberty to interact with original works and use them to create new, transformative art.
This phenomenon inspired BLIP, Brooklyn Law School’s Incubator and Policy Clinic, to develop a new curriculum aimed at teaching high school students about fair use, the lesser-known side of copyright law.