Jo Swinson (Liberal Democrat MP for East Dunbartonshire) has launched a campaign to overturn the ban imposed by Parliamentary authorities on putting up footage on YouTube or other video streaming sites.
Although MPs are allowed to take footage of the House of Commons in action and put it on their own website, they are not allowed to put that footage on YouTube or similar sites.
Which raises a range of problems, not helped by the rules not being that clear or consistent. As a result: footage isn’t put in front of as large an audience as possible.
Jo says:
I personally think that the more people see what goes on in Parliament, the better, which is why I am pushing for the rules to be changed. There may be copyright issues involved, and if so these should be re-examined at with a view to making Parliament as accessible as possible.
In some sections of society YouTube is watched more widely than television. We have BBC Parliament and some online hosting on MPs’ own websites, but why stop there?
This is fundamentally an issue about Parliament reforming itself to keep up-to-date with modern technology.
UPDATE: There’s a Facebook campaign you can back here.
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5 Comments
It’s been blocked for reasons that sound rather like the standard uber-conservative reasons why Parliament can’t be reformed – ie that’s the way things are and always must be so.
Seems rather silly in the light of things like this really!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rvu40xiYquk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asDbckUug_I&feature=related
If I wanted to manipulate Parliamentary video and upload it I could do that pretty easily.
This ruling must have been thought up by the same people who installed the nanny software on the Parliamentary email system and effectively prevented any discussion on the Sexual Offences Bill.
What exactly are we meant to find when we follow the link at the end of the latest party video?
http://blogs.libdems.org.uk/ doesn’t seem to go anywhere meaningful.
That’s not what the address at the end of the video says…? Certainly viewing it here it says http://blogs.libdems.org.uk/forcesfocus which is the new Forces Focus website.
So it is! Is this a new Lib Dem tool?