Legal and Ethical

 

Legal and ethical. 

Legal & Ethical Issues that affect the Interactive Media Industry

Unit A617_4078 Interactive Media Design.

 

Definitions of IP (to include: 1). Intellectual Property and permissions. 
2). Copyright. 3). Fair dealing. 4). Trademarks.  5). Patents.)

Media example of a copyright infringement case:

How could copyright affect you or your work?

On anything you create using your own mind is intellectual property, and this can be an idea but once you have made it tangible for example the thing is actually made or the article written it is copyrighted.  

It can belong to a business, or one person, it can also be shared with someone else.  If you are creating designs for a company it will belong to the company and generally the intellectual property belongs with the employer even in freelance situations, your contract will state this and if you want to retain ownership it will need to be written into the contract. 

So you own the copyright automatically if you made it but you can also sell or buy copyright. Getting permission to use or buy copyright is a five step procedure, first you must determine if permission is needed and then identify the owner and then the rights needed. Once all this is done you need to contact the owner and negotiate the rights needed and if payment is required and then lastly make sure you get your agreement in writing. 

There are different ways to protect your intellectual property, copyright, patents, design rights and trademarks. 

Copyright is the right to use or copy it, as we said copyright is automatic but you may need to be able to prove how and when you made it to prove you did it first. This needs to be something timestamped for example the publish date on an article or of the date of an instagram post with a photo of what you made. The standard of this used to be to post yourself a photo and not open the latter so the envelope had a date stamp on it but was not tampered with.

Copyright lasts for 75 years after the death of the creator or 50 in the case of music. 

The copyright ran out on the original version of winnie the pooh recently but the newer Disney one is still copyrighted. So as one tweet said “red shirt on the bear, artists beware. If nudehe be, your Pooh is free.”

Design rights are protections to the shape, configurations and appearance of a created object or garment and can be registered or unregistered. The shape and configuration of unregistered designs are protected for ten years from first sale or fifteen years from first creation and appearance is protected for three, again you will need to prove the date you made or first sold the item to challenge any infringement. You can register the design with a solicitor or an intellectual property attorney. The other sater but more costly option is to register it with the intellectual property office, this is very similar to the way you patent something. Patents are more for inventions and are often used for things like machine parts. 

They state in the patent process that your invention must be novel and unique for it to gain its patented statue. Patents are also filed under categories and filing under multiple ones will cost you more. All applications are made to the intellectual properties office and are territorial so if you want to extend it abroad you must apply in those countries too. 

Trademarks are another way to protect your IP, when you see  ™ on a logo or product it denotes an unregistered trademark.  It may be in the process of being trademarked though. In contrast the ® means it has been trademarked. You have to apply for a trademark and choose a category and it  can be expensive. Once a logo, phrase or even colour has been trademarked anyone can be sued for infringing on it. Trademarks last 10 years and then must be renewed 

   

There are exceptions to copyright. Fair dealings or fair use is one of these. This is the use of images or text in the context of criticism, news reporting, teaching, scholarship or research. Parody and pastiche are other exceptions. Another is incidental inclusion, so if I take a photo of a friend and put it on line and there happens to have a product in the background the creator of that product can't claim ownership of that image. 

If an image is Public domain it means you can use it as its copyright has run out, there are also creative commons licences and this means the owner of an otherwise copyrighted image has given permission for it to be used in certain ways, you do need to check what those permissions are. The website Dafont is a resource side for fonts that uses creative commons. You can download hundreds of different fonts but some are only free for personal use and others you could use in a commercial logo or website and you need to be careful of this and think about your usage. 

A recent example of a copyright infringement case is that of M&S taking Aldi to court over Colin the caterpillar cake. M&S claimed that the similarity of the cakes leads consumers to believe they are of the same standard and Aldi’s cake "rides on the coat-tails" of M&S's reputation. There are three trademarked aspects of Colin and M&S believe all have been infringed upon. 

The case has been settled and although neither side is saying much about it Aldi are still selling their cake so Cuthbert is still on the shelves as are the ones almost every other supermarket does. Although this was an intellectual property case it really became somewhat of a media storm and to me it seemed that wherever happened in court Aldi came out on top. 

When creating your website you need to think about if you have the rights to all parts of it, text,  photographs etc, as if the photo is of your product but you did not create it you do not own copyright and this is one way it could affect me. Another thing I could get into trouble with is  if I use the exact pantone colour of Tiffany blue, Barbie pink or Cadburys purple in designs as these companies have managed to trademark their pantines. 

At the end of the day if you are worried about whether you have the right to use it, don't! 

 

2. Data protection Act 2018

Definition:

Media or industry example of a data breach:

How could data protection affect you or your work?

The act was originally designed for paper filing systems and had to be updated to deal with the digital age. The ICO is the company that oversees the use of personal data. There are 8 core principles to the act. 

1.Fair and lawful use, transparency. This one is simply that you or your business may only collect, process, and hold personal information in a fair and transparent way, and this is the  reason you have tick boxes to ensure you  have  consent. You also need to explain how and why you need or will use the data.  

2.Specific for intended purpose. This means the date you collect is only used for the specific use for which the data owner or owners grant permission. You may not transfer, sell, or duplicate it for other purposes. 

3.Minimum date requirement requires all data you collect to be relevant to your reason for collection. 

4.Data retention accuracy. You need to check if the data you hold is accurate, for example if you have a mailing list, do the address form and are the customer still interested in hearing from you. 

5.Date retention time limit. As it sounds this is how long you keep the data for, the GDPR does not state how long this should be but it is best practice to invite your customer to review and update information periodically. 

6.The right to be forgotten. Every person has the right to not only know what information you hold on them but to remove that information immediately from your system. 

7.Ensure data security. It is your responsibility to ensure all date you hold is secure and is protected against atack. 

8.Accountability. This last one is really saying you must take responsibility for all of the above, and in the case of larger companies be able to prove this and have a dedicated employee whose job it is to ensure everything is being done properly. 

If these principles are breached legal action can be taken as they are a law, an example of a breach is when the mobile company Talk Talk hit the news in 2015 when the personal details of nearly 157,000 customers accessed, including bank account numbers and sort codes, unfortunately for these customers talk talks initial reaction was to assure customers that none of their data had been leaked but an investigation found this was not the case and were issued a fine of £400,000 a number that was said to reflect the seriousness of the event. The company is said to have made a number of mistakes and there were whistle blowers that said the weaknesses in their storage systems were known about for some time before it happened. 

If I use Mailchimp to deal with a mailing list they will deal with many of the data protection issues for me but I still need to be aware of data protection and how it affects me, if I put a contact form on my website this is data collection and needs to be done properly and securely. 

3. Defamation – libel and slander

Definitions – libel & slander:

Media or industry example of a defamation case:

How could libel or slander potentially affect you or your work?

Defamation is a loss of reputation caused by false statements made about a person or business and there are two types, Liable and slander. To put it simply Liable is written and slander is oral, though looked into deeper Liable is when the statement is more permanent and the statements will stay accessible in the public domain for a sufficiently long period of time. 

Libel is then a loss of reputation that is maintained over a long period after and as a result of the false statement, whereas slander occurs in a short period. So historically the only way or something to survive over a long period was for it to be written but these days a video on the internet of you saying something could last long enough to qualify as Liable but only if is easily accessible. While a tweet may not seem very permanent it is, and many cases have arrient from them. 

Johnny Depp lost his case against the Sun newspaper as they alleged he was a “wife beater” after a former partner accused him of violence. The case ran for 16 days and there were some things it could not hear because of a separate case being heard in the us against Ms. Heard. He did lose the case though as it was not a criminal case and he could not prove this article alone caused the damage to his career. 

It is easy to think slander and libel is not something you need to worry about but I need to make sure all my tweets are accurate, the same goes for any videos I make or blogs I write. 

4. Contracts & Employment law

Definition of legal contract (MUST include descriptions of: 1). three examples of contract types. 2). Working to a brief. 3). Penalties for breach of contract

Media or industry example of breach of employment contract:

How could employment contracts affect you?

A contract is a legally binding written document that protects all parties, the rights and obligations in there cover all manner of things but the main ones are that you have the right to be paid and your employer has the right to give you thenstructions of your job. 

Express terms are explicitly agreed by you and your employer and cover things like how much you get paid and holiday days sick pay etc. 

Implied terms and that you have a duty of trust to each other, this is grayer and covers things that are looked at as a duty of trust, you employer trusts you will be on time and in work when you are well and will not lie and say you are sick when you are not, equally an implied term is that your employer will make sure your place of work is safe. 

Statutory rights are the ones everyone gets and are laid out by the government. 

There are lots of different contract types for example a zero hours contract, this means that although you work for that company they are under no obligation to provide you with hours each week, but because of the nature of this contract they cant stop you taking work for someone else. A fixed term contract means the contract has a clear end date, this date should be set in advance, on a fixed term contract you should be treated like any other permanent member of staff unlike a self employed contractor who is not an employee so will be treated differently according to their contract. Although the company will not have to pay holiday and sick pay they can negotiate their hours and days of work. 

Within freelance work you may need to create or work to a brief, it is an informal form of contract. A brief is a summary that outlines what you and your client are expecting from your working relationship. A brief can be a verbal agreement but it is always best to get it in writing if you can. There are different types of briefs such as a negotiated one,a contractual one or an informal one, it may also be a collaborative one, it is important to state that not all briefs are paid. 

Both an employer and employee can be in breach of contract, there is always a chain to go up when any breach has occurred, from the side of the employer they would start with a verbal warning and then a written on and move from their, the employee may start with a chat with a manager and then the HR department and if it escalated they may need to get their union, in both cases there is lot to do before any legal action is taken. Consequences for breach of contract as an employee can be anything from docking pay to losing your job and in serious cases court and fines. For the employer and can mean compensation. 

In 2014 Nike filed a breach of contract against former designers, Nike alleged the three employees created a "blueprint (that) was largely a knockoff of one of Nike's own product design approaches, the 3 set up a design studio and took work for Adidas while still working for Nike and therefor Nike’s case consisted of , breach of contract, breach of duty of good faith and fair dealing, breach of duty of loyalty, misappropriation of trade secrets, tortious interference with current and prospective contractual and economic relations, and civil conspiracy. 

All three denied the claims and Nike settled with them and the amount has not been disclosed. 

Whether I plan to be employed for freelance, this is an area that will always affect me. I must negotiate and adhere to any contract i am involved in. When i am set or setting creating briefs I must make sure everything expected is clear from both sides, for example if I take on a brief for a logo design, it is best to set out what files the client will get and how many changes they are entitled to before they incur extra charges, also that the overall charges are pluss any add one, and when and how I expect to be payed.  



(Covered on Web Testing day)

5. 2010 Equality Act (EQA) – WEBSITE ACCESSIBILITY

Definition with emphasis on website accessibility:

Media or industry example of a legal case of EQA online accessibility:

How could the EQA affect you or your work?




ETHICAL

Why are ethics (business/professional ethics esp) important?


Definition of ‘ethics’:

Media or industry example of questionable ethics:

How or what ethical dilemma could affect your work?

Every choice we make has consequences for both ourselves and others and this is ture in business too, so a code of ethics  can ensure we have practical guidelines to help us make the right decisions. The divide between legal and ethical can be hard to find, some ethical issues have legalities to  back them up. But having an ethical code of conduct can really help you make make sure you are fair and responsible in your dealings 

The equalities act of 2010 sets out a legal framework to protect people from discrimination  and advance equality. 

This is a massive legal act and brings together lots of other acts but we are looking at the specific application to websites. Within that act there isn't one specific part that talks about websites but the same thing applies, just as a building needs to be accessible a website does too. If it does not need certain design standards you can be sued for accessibility. 

You want everyone to have an optimised experience,

The equalities act covers goods, services and facilities, and these days websites provide access to goods and services and may be a service in their own right, so you need to make reasonable adjustments to make your website  accessible. Such as maing sure it can be read by a screen reader and that the meunues and accessible from the keyboard as well as a mouse. Alt text is really useful and makes sure all photos have text embedded in them, this not only helps screen readers, it also helps your search engine seo or if for some reason a photo is not loading properly the text will show what it was meant to be, 

There are also protected characteristics such as age, race, religion and disabilities

 

An example of a legal case brought forward because a website is not accessible is that on january the 3rd 2019 a class action lawsuit was filed against Beyonce Knowles company parks entertainment, the website that sells concert tickets and other goods was missing several important accessibility features. 

That included a lack of alt text for important images (alt text is necessary for visually impaired users who use screen readers to describe images), inaccessible drop-down menus and navigation buttons, and the inability to use a keyboard instead of a mouse. The lawsuit stated that the lack of these features on the side meant it was entirely inaccessible to anyone who was legally blind. 

Relationship with client 


Describe the importance of good client relationship, listening to client needs and respecting client wishes:

Media or industry example of client relations:

How could this client relations affect you and your work?

Client relationships are obviously a very important part of any working relationship, whether it is a short project or a long term one. If you are working freelance or or are fully employed your working reputation is important. Communication is key to a good relationship and as is respect for the clients and listening to their needs. Establish  good open communications from the beginning and make sure you make yourself accessible and approachable. 

Always try to keep a positive attitude toward projects and your clients, this will ease the client if they have any worries. Always remember things you take for granted are not necessarily known by your client so share your knowledge and explain processes. This will help if you see an issue with a client's idea and need to explain this to them, but although you have expertise you need to stay open minded and be open to their needs. It is best to try and be human at all times  provided expertise and exceed expectations. 

An architect helped a friend landscape their garden for free and ended up being sued for £265,000 after it went wrong, the two sides entersed what they described as an “email war” and as it was not a bad bit of an advice but a significant projet the court rules the architect had a duty of care to carry out the job with the same level of responsibility as a paying customer. If there had been clear communications and documentation outlining expectations and responsibilities this would all have been avoided, even if it wasn't a formal contract some written understanding of each party's roles would have been helpful. But when undertaking  work a contract is always best practice. 

3. The ‘media effects’ debate

Definition of the ‘media effects’ debate:

Media example of ‘media effects’ being cited:

How might the ‘media effects’ debate affect your work?

This refers to the idea that the media can influence people, it looks at to what degree and how. It is a very complex and ever evolving debate. 

Can reading an article or watching a film  change your views on something, can they change behaviour, for example we all became more aware of the issue with plastic after blue planet and this is a good effect but on the other  it has often been argued that violent films and music will make people violent. 

There are many theories about the way the media influences people or to put it another way the techniques used by the media to influence people , some of the main ones are the Hypodermic needle theory, this is a linear communication theory that suggests that ideas can be directly “injected into the brains” of consumers through repetition of attitudes, ideia values and attitudes and  it suggests a certain amount of passive malleability to the audience. 

Desensitisation theory is the idea that the more exposed we are to something such as violence the less sensitive we become to it and argues that this will then lead to more violent behaviours. 

Copycat theory is simply monkey see, monkey do. So if you see a violent act you may copy it, this one is mainly a worry for more vulnerable adults and for children and is one of the reasons there is a watershed on tv, meaning some things can't be shown before a certain time. 

But the argument also asks Who is responsible for it? The film maker? The distributor? The consumer or does everyone need to play their part. The counter arguments are that these things are much more complex, and each example is more nuanced and other factors need taking into account, did someone copy violence from a film or were they suffering from illness or was it many contributing factors from their  social to economic  status. The debate also asks who is protecting who from what? Do we need to be protected? Should we really be  censoring things? 

A very interesting example of media effects in action was that there was an  inquiry into whether facebook influenced the Brexit vote. The company had to go into parliament to answer questions on its algorithm and if it had been manipulated by Russia into running adverts and targeting people that may be influenced in their vote. There was no conclusive outcome though the company strongly denies any bias to one side, but there is no denying that social media is a new influence in elections and that companies must take it into consideration. 

This could effect my work in that I must think about how things can be read and interpreted, 



4. Representation (eg race, age & gender)


Definition of media representation:

Media or industry example of representation:

How could representation affect you or your work? 


How media deals with and present, gender, age, sex, ethnicity, nationality and religous identily as well as different social backgrounds.    

The media has the power to shape an audience's knowledge and understanding of different groups. When making media in any form you need to consider not only that you are representing multiple groups but that they are being represented fairly for example are you only using people of colour to portray negative situations? And what does this say to your audience? 

When taking photos it is a good idea to consider how representative you are being, especially as the company grows. When you are super small just using photos of you or a friend is fine but once you can pay for models always consider diversifying. 

5. Blasphemy


Definition of blasphemy:

Media or industry example:

How could blasphemy affect you or your work?

Blasphemy is the act of insulting or showing lack of reverence to a deity, or sacred objects, of any religion not just the main one of a country.  This used to be a legal regulation in this country but it is now more of an ethical one. Some countries still have laws in place and blasphemy can be prosecuted under the law. 

The Simpsons has been in trouble for Blasphemy, and a channel in Turkey got fined for airing an episode, the creators would argue that because it is a parody it is exempt from such laws but though this has worked in the uk and us it did not in turkey. 

I first through it was simple for me to avoid blasphemy but if I use religious iconography either or purpose or by mistake i could get into trouble for it and companies have, depictions of  Buddha or any of the hindo gods are still scared and all religious symbolism and iconography need to carefully considered before use.