A young Washington-based political video blogger known on YouTube as EmergencyCheese has forced into the open a question in one of his videos I have had for a long time: since political candidates for office often violate copyright when it serves their political campaign, why do they not modernize Copyright law to make lawful activities they seem to feel are harmless?
While this blogger is US based and is talking about US presidential Candidates, if you look at any Canadian candidate or MP website in Canada you will also find copyright infringements. How can they infringe copyright (often because they and their staff don't understand this excessively complex law), and then act so morally outraged when they find out that other Canadians do the same?
Concrete examples would be very useful
A list of concrete examples would be a great resource to have.
To be able to say to an MP "see, even you apparently can't figure out what's legal" would be very valuable indeed when pushing for broad exemptions for fair use and acts in the privacy of our own homes.
Agreed
If a group of volunteers came forward and offered to do this, we could compile such a list. The most common thing I see on MP websites are full text of newspaper articles that just happen to mention or quote the MP.
Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) consultant.