As Election Day, November 2nd, is fast approaching, I thought it would be timely to do a piece on politicians and how they periodically run afoul of the copyright laws.

Over the past few years, there have been several political candidates accused of using copyrighted material in their campaigns, and “fair use” tends to be the common justification offered. Fair use is an exception to a copyright holder’s right to exclusive use of their original work, and grants other parties the privilege to use the copyrighted material without the copyright holder’s permission or consent.