In the US, we have what is called "The Fair Use Doctrine," in which you can cite short snippets of works from others to help express an idea or concept. It's necessary to ensure freedom of speech, especially that of a political nature.
We have this ability in the US (not granted by a government -- it's that exceptionalist thing educated people understand and that everyone thinks is evil), and it's necessary. However, it doesn't necessarily apply to borrowing large works of others engaged in personal or commercial work (it's that legal thing that makes lawyers make a living.) However, RLC is a public entity, worthy of comment, so I think they allow some "Fair Use" to rule: as long as it's controlled and people are not just ripping them off. CC does work as advertising and the fact that publication of pictures on CC lasts is because we have a paying membership base and it excludes the massive rip-off sites from stealing the pictures that we have "borrowed" from RLC to illustrate our comments.
That's just a fricking guess, of course.
Sounds logical. In Canada we don't have that. We are free to download, post, upload which is not against our laws for now. They have been working to get that changed but the SCC keeps striking them down. It's all fine here as long as you don't sell what's downloaded or uploaded for monetary gain. I imagine sometime in the not so distant future that will change.
Wouldn't the answer be to upload pics and vids to hosting sites owned by Canadians in a Canadian domain then? I guess if it's a free site, not one of those pay to download-at-a-decent-speed-ones, then it should be ok right?
Right. I have never really looked to see what sites I have used in the past are Canadian or not. I just used them because they worked for the time being. I'll have a scout around tomorrow on the net and see if I can find some reliable Canadian servers.