Legal and Ethical Considerations

Legal and Ethical Considerations

Copyright

The Copyright, designs and Patents Act 1988. Copyright gives anyone who has created anything the legal rights over that, whether it’s audio, images, books or any other form of media texts. For anyone to use this material without permission from the creator’s means they are committing a civil offence and can be taken to court and fined. You can get away with copyright law if it’s for things such as reviews or criticism, news reporting, academic research or through public domain where the rights disappear if the creator has been dead for 70 years onwards or if the creator themselves have put their media in the public domain which means it becomes free for public use.

The advantages are for copyright law is that if you create anything it can’t be stolen for someone else to use without your permission, for example if you write a script nobody could take that as there work or use it without your permission. Other advantages are that you could earn more money by charging people to use your script or whatever it may be.
The disadvantages are if you were to need something that you don’t have copyright to its may take time and your money to get the copyright and could be a lot of hassle depending on if the creator was even willing to let you use it.

For example in the hangover the character Stu gets a copy of Mike Tysons tattoo, and just before this come out the tattooist that created it for Tyson tried to sue Warner Bros for copyright.

Libel

Libel is defamation through written words or images. It is a civil offence designed to protect individuals and companies. This English law allows anyone to be taken to court if proven they have published any false statements or stories upon anybody or any company. In court any statement if straight away classed as false and deamination unless can be proved true with solid evidence. This can be made even harder if the person is big in the public eye as they can afford expensice lawyers so if you don’t have solid evidence whether you’re sure it’s true or not you might not want to publish it.

The advantages of this are that without evidence the media can’t get away with defamation over your name and can’t make up lies.
The disadvantages are if you know this is true put don’t have enough solid evidence to publish a story that could potentially bring you a lot of income.

An example of this is Tom Cruise is currently trying to sue an American magazine for defamation as they published an article in July claiming that Cruise had abandoned his 6 year old daughter Suri. His Lawyer published a statement on behalf of Cruise saying it was lies and hurtful. The case will be taken to court in the upcoming months.

Ethical Consideration

Legal Constraints

It is an offence to publicize racial and religious hatred this is known as the Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006. This is if anything is produced in the media via chat shows or call ins etc. If caught doing this you can be prosecuted as it is a defence. There is no balancing so on a chat show you couldn’t have an extremely anti racial person Vs a racist person as that is still committing the offence. Some of the exceptions or in films and TV shows where the character may be a racist person or against a certain religion and then would have to act out in that way.

The advantages are that this has stopped a lot of racial and religious abuse that used to be heavily publicized in the media. Disadvantages are that sometimes there is an extremely fine line that changes all the time depending on the situation so you have to be so careful when entering that grey area.

Representation

Media producers have to be more careful now than they ever had to be for stereotyping different groups. What producers could have gotten away with 20 years ago isn’t acceptable in our day and age.  For example kids that hang around on streets playing are regularly classed as trouble makers and people in the public automatically feel distressed around them this is due to press making a minority group bigger and tarnishing kids that could be doing nothing wrong. This is because media has ‘free speech’ which comes back to the ‘Should media producers be allowed to say what they want about a minority?’  Shows like ‘The Only Way Is Essex’ and ‘Geordie Shore’ give some people the wrong impression of the areas where these shows are shot which is an example of people stereotyping a lot of people for a tiny minority.

Privacy

There is no strict or specific laws to privacy in the UK but it is stated ‘’the right to respect for private and family life, home and correspondence.’’ In article 8 of the Human Rights Act 1998.

I believe ordinary people are entitled to their own privacy away from media if that is what they desire. I don’t think it’s any persons right to intrude into somebody’s private life if they have not been invited nor put themselves in that spotlight. I also believe that celebrities, politicians, sports stars etc have the right to privacy as well, whether or not they put themselves in the spot light everyone is entitled to a private lifestyle if not more so to these ‘celebrities’ who have given their privacy up for most of their lives down to their jobs/careers or upbringing if they want a holiday or when there in the comfort of their own home I don’t think they should be allowed to be photographed for the world to see.

An example of this is when the royals Kate and William were on their honeymoon she was photographed by paparazzi  topless when they were in a private location where no one could get to them. I think this was wrong and believe that even though they are very much public figure if they have not put themselves in a situation where they want to be seen by the world they deserve to have the privacy they are entitled to.