Cyberlaw Clinic Helps Produce Fair Use Resources w/Berkman’s DLRP

Via Cyberlaw Clinic

Harvard Law School students Olga Slobodyanyuk and Leo Angelakos of the Cyberlaw Clinic recently teamed up with the Berkman Center‘s Youth and Media team to develop a set of resources regarding the legal doctrine of fair use. Olga and Leo helped to develop three new sets of resources for students and teachers. Together, they produced a podcast in collaboration with Radio Berkman; a guide for teachers (including a number of education-specific resources); and an infographic to explain fair use doctrine in a visual way. You can find out more about the resources here.

The release of these resources coincided with Fair Use/Fair Dealing Week, an annual event meant to celebrate, promote, and explain the doctrine of fair use. This year, it took place from February 22nd to February 26th. Fair Use Week represents a concerted effort among a variety of entities—ranging from individuals to large institutions—to release and share information about fair use. The resources developed by the Youth and Media project and the Clinic will help grow Berkman’s Digital Literacy Resource Platform, an evolving collection of tools about online safety, privacy, creative expression, and information quality that can help users navigate connected learning environments and the digital world.

Olga and Leo report that they had a great experience working on the project:

We were super excited to work on this project! Creating the podcast on fair use was a lot of fun. In the end, working together with Radio Berkman, we created a quick and conversational piece that covers the essentials of fair use and provides some examples of how the doctrine is applied.

The infographic was interesting in that it aimed to portray legal doctrine in a visual manner. For the resource guide, we focused on materials that would be most helpful to teachers. We included comprehensive guidelines, FAQs, infographics, short videos, and databases of legal cases.

As clinical students, this was a unique project. Instead of producing a legal research memo, we were asked to creatively describe the doctrine in an interesting and digestible way, accessible to a broad audience. We look forward to future collaborations between the Clinic and Andres and Paulina from the Youth and Media team.

Fair Use Week “is designed to highlight and promote the opportunities presented by fair use and fair dealing, celebrate successful stories, and explain these doctrines.” The Clinic is pleased to have played a role in promoting the broader goals of Fair Use Week and supporting the DLRP.