Unit 1 Fact Sheet Mo Miah

Legal and Ethical Issues

Legal Issues

Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

The law gives the creators of literary, dramatic, musical, artistic works, sound recordings,
broadcasts, films and typographical arrangement of published editions, rights to control the
ways in which their material may be used.

The rights cover: broadcast and public performance, copying, adapting, issuing, renting and
lending copies to the public.

This is a CIVIL law not a CRIMINAL law.

This means it is not a criminal offence to break the law, which could result in a fine or jail
sentence.

Instead, the person who owns the copyright has to sue the person they believe has broken
the law. The case is then heard in a civil court and if the person is found guilty of breaking
copyright law then they will have to pay damages to the owner of the copyright. The
amount of damages is set by the court.

Types of work protected

Literary  
Song lyrics, manuscripts, manuals, computer programs, commercial documents, leaflets,
newsletters and articles etc.
Dramatic  
Plays, dance etc.
Musical  
Recordings and score.
Artistic  
Photography, painting, sculptures, architecture, technical drawings/diagrams, maps, logos.
Typographical arrangement of published editions
Magazines, periodicals, etc.
Sound recording
May be recordings of other copyright works, e.g. musical and literary.
Film  
Video footage, films, broadcasts and cable programmes.
The Copyright (Computer Programs) Regulations 1992 extended the rules covering literary
works to include computer programs.

Duration of copyright
For literary, dramatic, musical or artistic works: 70 years from the end of the calendar year
in which the last remaining author of the work dies.
If the author is unknown, copyright will last for 70 years from end of the calendar year in
which the work was created, although if it is made available to the public during that time,
by publication, authorised performance, broadcast, exhibition etc, then the duration will be
70 years from the end of the year that the work was first made available.
Sound Recordings: 50 years from the end of the calendar year in which the work was
created or, if the work is released within that time, 70 years from the end of the calendar
year in which the work was first released.
Films: 70 years from the end of the calendar year in which the last principal director, author
or composer dies.
If the work is of unknown authorship: 70 years from end of the calendar year of creation, or
if made available to the public in that time, 70 years from the end of the year the film was
first made available.
Typographical arrangement of published editions: 25 years from the end of the calendar
year in which the work was first published.
Broadcasts and cable programmes: 50 years from the end of the calendar year in which the
broadcast was made.

APPLICATION:

Copyright is a civil law which applies to a wide range of creative works in material form,
giving creators of original works the right to control the use of their material by third parties,
for a fixed period of time. The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 gives the author or
creator the exclusive right to copy, adapt, communicate, lend or sell copies of the work,
although this right can be sold or transferred. The copyright law covers original literary,
dramatic, musical or artistic works, and to sound recordings, films, broadcasts and the
typographical arrangement of published editions. The consequences of breaking the
copyright law is a finable offence of up to £50,000.

If magazine producers were to use someone else's work, they would have to get permission
from the owner of the work and then they would have to sign documents as evidence.
Magazine producers need to ensure that all their content, images and text, are original or to
seek document permission if they need to use copyrighted material, e.g. Archive images.

The law specifically applies to magazines as magazines and digital publications are protected
by UK copyright law, and copyright law applies to everyone. The magazine company, Take a
Break prevent breaching this law as before using any images and text that is not their own as
they ask permission for them to use the material and it will be documented.
Equality Act 2010
This law legally protects people from discrimination in the workplace and in wider society.
It is against the law to discriminate against anyone because of:
⮚ Age

⮚ Being or becoming a transsexual person

⮚ Being married or in a civil partnership

⮚ Being pregnant or on maternity leave

⮚ Disability

⮚ Race including colour, nationality, ethnic or national origin

⮚ Religion/belief or lack of religion/belief

⮚ Sex

⮚ Sexual orientation

This is a CRIMINAL law.

Therefore anyone who is considered to be breaking the law could be arrested. It would
result in a criminal trial which if found guilty could result in a fine or jail sentence.

APPLICATION:

The Equality Act 2010 legally protects people from discrimination in the workplace and in
wider society. It replaced previous anti-discrimination laws with a single Act, making the law
easier to understand and strengthening protection in some situations. The consequences of
breaching the law is punishable by a fine of up to £5,000.

This will impact Take a Breaks magazine production as magazine companies need to watch
what they are writing as it may offend many people, to prevent this magazine companies
hire a sub-editor to check the work carefully. Producers must not discriminate against
anyone at all in magazine production in the images and text.

Intellectual property
What intellectual property is
Having the right type of intellectual property protection helps you to stop people stealing or
copying:
⮚ the names of your products or brands

⮚ your inventions

⮚ the design or look of your products

⮚ things you write, make or produce

 Copyright, patents, designs and trade marks are all types of intellectual property protection.
You get some types of protection automatically, others you have to apply for.

You own intellectual property if you:

⮚ created it (and it meets the requirements for copyright, a patent or a design

⮚ bought intellectual property rights from the creator or a previous owner

⮚ have a brand that could be a trade mark e.g. a well known product name

If you believe anyone has stolen or copied your property you would sue them in civil court.

Types of protection
The type of protection you can get depends on what you’ve created. You get some types of
protection automatically, others you have to apply for.

Automatic protection

Protection you have to apply for

Type of protection Examples of intellectual property Time to allow for application
Trade marks Product names, logos, jingles 4 months
Appearance of a product including,
Registered designs shape, packaging, patterns, colours, 1 month
decoration
Inventions and products, eg machines
Patents Around 5 years
and machine parts, tools, medicines

APPLICATION:

Intellectual Property law relates to the establishment and protection of intellectual creations
such as inventions, designs, brands, artwork and music. If you infringe someone's
Intellectual Property the owner can take legal action against you. This can result in
injunctions against you, along with orders to pay high costs and damages. In some cases,
infringers can even be found guilty of a criminal offence and be given a prison sentence or
an unlimited fine.
This affects magazine production as producers need to be careful just in case their magazine
layout looks like another magazine layout. Take a Break prevents this because they make
unique designs to their layout and logo.

Obscene Publications Act 1959

For the purposes of this Act an article shall be deemed to be obscene if its effect or (where
the article comprises two or more distinct items) the effect of any one of its items is, if taken
as a whole, such as to tend to deprave and corrupt persons who are likely, having regard to
all relevant circumstances, to read, see or hear the matter contained or embodied in it.

In this Act ‘article’ means any description of an article containing or embodying matter to be
read or looked at or both, any sound record and any film or other record of a picture or
pictures.

This is a criminal law.

APPLICATION:

The Obscene Publications Act 1959 criminalises the publication (whether or not for gain) of
an obscene article. The Obscene Publications Act 1959 is a punishable offence to distribute,
circulate, sell, hire, lend or give away obscene material. It defines obscene material as that
which is likely to “deprave and corrupt” the intended audience when taken as a whole.

This impacts Take a Breaks magazine production as sub-editors would need to double check
magazines to check if everything is appropriate and not obscene. The law specifically applies
to magazines as sub-editors double check the work in order to ensure that there is no
obscene content in the magazine, for example censoring where necessary in the images and
the text.

Trespass
This is a civil law.
Trespass to land consists of any unjustifiable intrusion by a person upon the land in
possession of another.
Civil trespass is actionable in the courts.

APPLICATION:

Trespass alone is a matter of civil law, which means that the police have no power to arrest
you for it; police may nonetheless help landowners remove trespassers from land. Trespass
is entering – or putting property on – land that belongs to someone else, without their
permission. The magazine must not access private property without permission, if the
magazine company was doing a photoshoot in private property, they would have to ask for
permission and have documentation for this. This law specifically applies to magazines as all
magazines have to take photographs to put in the publication to attract customers.
Magazine companies such as Take a Break need to ask permission to take the photographs
or they can go to a public place where it isn’t classed as trespassing.

Privacy
The introduction of the Human Rights Act 1998 incorporated into English law the European
Convention on Human Rights.

Article 8.1 of the ECHR provides an explicit right to respect for a private life:
Article 8 protects your right to respect for your private life, your family life, your home and
your correspondence (letters, telephone calls and emails, for example).
 
Privacy Law is a law which deals with the use of people’s personal information and making
sure they aren't intruded upon. These laws make sure people can't have their information
wrongly used without permission.

APPLICATION:

Privacy law is the body of law that deals with the regulating, storing, and using of personally
identifiable information, personal healthcare information, and financial information of
individuals, which can be collected by governments, public or private organisations, or other
individuals. This applies to magazines like Take a Break as sub-editors will need to double
check if any author of articles' private information has been added to the magazine and
ensure that this is not published.

Defamation Act 2013

This Act reformed defamation law on issues of the right to freedom of expression and the
protection of reputation. It also comprised a response to perceptions that the law as it stood
was giving rise to libel tourism and other inappropriate claims.

The Act changed existing criteria for a successful claim, by requiring claimants to show actual
or probable serious harm (which, in the case of for-profit bodies, is restricted to serious
financial loss), before suing for defamation in England or Wales.

It also enhanced existing defences, by introducing a defence for website operators hosting
user-generated content (provided they comply with a procedure to enable the complainant
to resolve disputes directly with the author of the material concerned or otherwise remove
it), and introducing new statutory defences of truth, honest opinion, and "publication on a
matter of public interest“.

LIBEL
A written, published false statement that is damaging to a person's reputation.

SLANDER
Making a false spoken statement damaging to a person's reputation.

Defamation is a civil law and so you would need to sue someone who you believe has
damaged your reputation.

APPLICATION:
The Defamation Act 2013 protects people from their reputation being ruined by false and
inaccurate statements. The consequences of breaching this law would enable the person
you libelled to take you to court and sue you. This applies to magazine production as they
must make sure everything they publish is accurate and that they avoid saying anything that
impacts a person’s reputation. Take a Breaks magazine production as the writers will need to
be careful on writing about people as it may be used against them in court as libel. They will
change people’s names to protect them from claims, they will avoid inaccurate information
and avoid ruining people’s reputation.

Ethical Constraints
Ethical issues are linked with what is right and what is wrong. This isn't a legal issue, it just
means that you are working within accepted norms of society and you have to behave in a
certain way to avoid offending anyone. Most of it is based on judgements and links with
society’s standards. If ethical lines are crossed it could create offence, harm or controversy.
Regarding media products there can be different outcomes that might happen. For example
offensive, you could give a bad review which will then result in a bad reputation for the
product and then they would lose their audience. By this happening someone would
complain to the regulatory body.

Protecting Under 18s

The Protection Under 18s law protects minors by determining whether their content is
appropriate for them, therefore if the photos were too violent or displayed nudity, the
audience might be offended given that the content is meant to protect minors. If the
content applies to minors under the age of 18, it must be both fair and appropriate for them
to read. They must confirm that their work protects everyone under the age of 18 since if
this rule is broken, the audience who reads it might be insulted. By making sure their
information is suited for them and if it is targeted at them, they avoid doing this.

Representation
Representation describes how people, places, or events are portrayed in media production.
Media products create a specific representation of people, places and events through
camera shots, editing, and sounds because nothing in them is actually real: everything is a
representation of reality that has been created. Therefore, stereotypes play a significant role
in representation because they reduce specific representations to a few protective
characteristics, and when someone discusses stereotypes, it is frequently negative and
reinforced by the media.

The magazine producers would have to avoid all negative stereotypes in the magazine and
will need to double check their facts before publishing anything that might offend or distress
a person in the target audience if it contains negative text or images about that person.
Magazine producers also need to make sure that what they are publishing is appropriate for
the target audience.

This applies to Take a Break as they will double check the magazine before publishing to
make sure that there are no negative stereotypes in the magazine as if there is and Take A
Break have published it, this could affect their company a lot by losing their reputation as
Britain's best-selling women's magazine.

Production methods
The Production methods law is when someone or a place is being filmed or listened to
through a microphone for example without their permission as it would be considered
ethically wrong as the person being filmed or recorded would not know at all. If the person
finds out that the magazine company has filmed them without permission they could be
physically or mentally not well and this will result in it causing harm to them .

One way the magazine company can avoid this is that the company asks for permission a
couple of days before so that the person can think about if they really want to do it or not. If
the magazine company does film someone without permission they are exploiting them and
the person could possibly be able to bring a claim for defamation of character against the
publisher of the magazine.

This applies to Take a Break as they need to ask for permission to use the image, they do this
by asking a couple of days before so the person can think about if they want to hand their
image to Take a Break. If Take a Break uses an image without asking permission, it will
usually be copyright infringement. If they are found guilty of copyright infringement they
could also get fined by the court up to £50,000.

Content- Images and Text

The Content refers to the information provided about a specific subject and what it refers to.
The ethical issues are linked to content through the use of images, text and making sure
everything is appropriate for everyone, for example making sure the content is not harmful
or offensive. For example, the images and text are not used to discriminate against any
ethnic or social groups. Content that would be seen as unethical could include anything that
encourages criminal activity or offensive behaviour towards others.

The magazine producers would have to be very careful on writing on topics as it will need to
be appropriate for the target audience and to also make sure that it is not harmful or
offensive to anyone reading the magazine. Magazine companies like Take a Break must also
make sure that they are not seen supporting negative statements/arguments. They need to
make sure all content is appropriate for the target audience and they don’t support negative
behaviour and ideas.

This applies to Take a Break as they will need to make sure that articles they are writing are
appropriate and clean for the target audience. Take a Break must make sure that they do not
take sides with political statements as this will be controversial. Take a break must also not
write about articles which are negative or dangerous as this will not be appropriate for the
magazine and they will face a lot of backlash for it.