Legal Acts

Laws

Are written, approved and enforced by a particular government. If you break a law you could face police investigation, court appearance and fine.

Ethics

Rules of conducts, responsibility (not the law). If you break an ethical code you may be forced to act with ethical disproval from your peers or professional body.

Legal Constraints

Legislation that controls the creative media sector - Covered by law

Ethical Constraints

Working within accepted norms of society - What is right or wrong way to behave - Covered by self regulating industry controls.

Privacy Law

The law that is a regulation that protects a persons right to be left alone. Giving people their own space and making sure that things are kept hidden that don't need to be published. People are allowed to lead their lives without public scrutiny. 

'The right to privacy' and the 'right to be left alone' - 'harassment and data protection'.

Data Protection Act - Data can be kept private unless asked to be shared and permission is granted, e.g, the News of the World phone hacking scandal.

Example - Sony CD Spyware - Sony BMG ran into a major privacy flap in Autumn 2005 because of a certain Anti-Virus software that they added to their music CDs called 'XCP'. When played on a Windows PC, the CD installed a hidden rootkit software onto the PC, this then communicated with the CD which was being played, and told the IP of the address of the PC back to Sony.

It also had other issues, such as creating vulnerabilities for worms and/or viruses to exploit on PCs. This was quickly picked upon and critics bashed this concept, proving it to be unhelpful and this led Sony to making a free CD with removal kits for the software. Sony also recalled all of the CDs and their contents, thus they retrieved their mistake, lawsuits were filed against Sony in three places, Texas, New York and California. Sony were soon required to pay $150 to any consumer whose PC was damaged by this software, as punishment for Sony violating this law.

Copyright and Intellectual Property Law

The law that your media may only be seen in particular ways, that your films has certain licensing and trademarks, meaning that you have the rights of the product. 

Something that is unique to you if physically created. i.e an idea is not your intellectual property but the words you write are.

Copyright is a type of intellectual law that protects your work.

By knowing your rights and having the right type of protection you can stop people from stealing or copying: The names of your products or brands, your inventions, the design or look of your products and the things you write, make or product. E.g Hangover Part 2 'Tattoo'/Avatar and William Roger Dean.

Example - Lucasfilm Ltd. v. High Frontier and Lucasfilm v. Committee for a Strong, Peaceful America

When politicians, journalists and scientists, in the mid-1980s, nicknamed the Reagan administration’s Strategic Defensive Initiative (SDI), the “star wars” program, George Lucas’s production company was miffed. It did not want the public’s positive associations with the term to be marred by the controversial plan to place anti-missile weapons in space.

In 1985, Lucasfilm Ltd. filed a lawsuit against High Frontier and the Committee for a Strong, Peaceful America—two public interest groups that referred to SDI as “star wars” in television messages and literature. 

Though Lucasfilm Ltd. had a trademark for Star Wars, the federal district court ruled in favor of the interest groups and their legal right to the phrasing so long as they didn’t attach it to a product or service for sale. “Since Jonathan Swift’s time, creators of fictional worlds have seen their vocabulary for fantasy appropriated to describe reality,” read the court decision.

Libel Law

To publish in print something which is not true or may harm that persons reputation and may bring hate or scorn towards them.

It must be a statement which claims to be a fact and is not clearly identified as an opinion.

Example - Kiera Knightley - The Daily Mail published accusations that Knightley had an eating disorder and had been responsible for the death of a young lady with anorexia. The actress went to court and was awarded several thousand dollars which she handed over to a charity.