Legal & Ethical Issues that affect the Interactive Media Industry
Here’s some information that you may find useful:
Intellectual Property (IP) and permissions – IP Is something that you create using your mind such as an idea, an invention, a design, an artistic work or a symbol. IP can have more than one owner, belong to an individual person or businesses which can be sold and/or transferred. You own IP if you created it and it meets the requirements for copyright, patent or a design or if you have bought the IP rights from the creator or owner. If you are freelance working for someone else or employed by them you would not usually own the IP. Making sure you have the right type of Intellectual Property Protection helps to stop people copying or stealing your work, some types are automatic and some need to be applied for.
Copyright.- Applies to work that is recorded which includes Literacy, Artistic, Musical, Dramatic, Film, Sound recording and Typographical. Permission is needed to use any copyrighted work such as with a license or agreed fees. For example, making a website; you should consider whether you are the owner of all the content including all the data, photographs, text and software. If you are not the owner you will need a license from the copyright owner in order to use, edit or include the work on your website.
Fair dealing- Is an exception to copyright whereby fair dealing/fair use allows a party to use copyrighted work without the need for the owner’s permission for reasons such as criticism and reporting current events, comments, news, teaching or non-commercial research and private study.
Trademarks- Is a way of protecting IP. ™symbol refers to an unregistered trade mark, it shows that the word, logo or phrase next to it is being used as a trademark. ® symbol identifies that the logo/design is registered and is subject to fees and documentation which is legally bounding, using this symbol without registering it officially is a criminal offence in the UK.
Patents- A patent is a type of IP that gives you protection and gives you the right to take legal action against anyone who makes, uses, sells or imports it without your permission.
Public Domain –The term “public domain” refers to creative materials that are not protected by intellectual property laws such as copyright, trademark, or patent laws. The public owns these works, not an individual author or artist. Anyone can use a public domain work without obtaining permission, but no one can ever own it.
Creative Commons – Creative Commons (CC) is an internationally active non-profit organisation that provides free licences for creators to use when making their work available to the public. When a creator releases their work under a CC licence, members of the public know what they can and can't do with the work. For example, Adobe Stock, Unsplash,1001 Fonts, DA Fonts, Flaticon.
A Media example of a copyright infringement case is the current case between Marks & Spencer’s and Aldi over the dispute about Aldi’s Cuthbert Caterpillar copying M&S’s Colin the Caterpillar cake. M&S accused Aldi of copyright infringements as the caterpillar is similar. An agreement was made but M&S were unable to prove that Aldi’s version was undoubtable the same.
How could copyright affect you or your work? An understanding of copyright law is extremely important for any professional artist, whether selling original work or understanding reproduction rights. In most scenarios the copyright lies with the artists no matter who owns or has bought the artwork. There are exceptions to this rule when an artist has been employed or commissioned during employment whereby the copyright often stays with the employer.
Also, when selling a picture through a gallery to a private client neither the gallery or the client has the right to reproduce the artwork. Most artists copyright lasts for their life time and for 70 years after their death although it is possible to sell an artist’s copyright, these sales of copyright must be put in writing otherwise it is invalid and cannot be legally enforced. Galleries and publishers are generally entitled to reproduce an artist’s work in order to help sell it through advertisements, catalogues and emails to clients but they are not entitled to profit any money from these reproductions. Therefore, copyright types are definitely needed to be explored when creating artwork to be sold in creative spaces to protect the artist and make sure they are not exploited and that their ideas, designs and artwork is not reproduced without consent.
The Data protection Act 2018
The UK Data Protection Act was designed to protect personal data that is stored on computers and filing systems. There are 8 principles of this Act to make sure that personal information is stored lawfully and doesn’t breach any laws and protects personal information. For example:
-Fair and Lawful Use, Transparency – You or your business may only collect, process and hold personal information in a fair and transparent way with consent, for example collecting email addresses to send invoices or dispatch confirmations.
- Specific for Intended Purpose – You must collect data for the specific use for which the owner has given permission and consent. You may not transfer, sells or duplicate it for any other reason or purpose.
- Minimum Data Requirement – You cannot ask for other details irrelevant to its intended purpose without permission and store this information without consent.
- Need for Accuracy – The information that has been collected must be checked in periodically to make sure that the information held is still accurate. For example, if customers have changed their address, phone number or contact details contact should be made to ask them to check their details (annually) and check if consent is allowed to continue to store the information.
- Data Retention Time Limit – These state how long these details can be stored, generally it is good practice to remove customer personal data after a set time, generally an annual email would be sent to ask customers to update their information that is stored.
Media or industry example of a data breach was the Morrison’s data breach whereby a IT employee of Morrison’s Supermarket downloaded the payroll data of 100,000 Morrison’s employees onto a personal USB stick and uploaded the data onto a public file sharing website after being subject to unrelated disciplinary proceedings. This data was transferred to another location and downloaded to an unsecure website and used without permission, which is a criminal offence in the UK.
How could data protection affect you or your work? If you are storing customers or people/ business information and there is no consent or permission, data protection laws are being broken and it is a criminal offense by which you can be sued and made liable for misuse of data whereby private information can be leaked to unsecure locations, this can be costly, an offense and/or permit prison time. MailChimp are a great company who sort this out for you when going online or setting up a business on the web.
Defamation is a publication of a statement that has caused, or is likely to cause, serious harm to a person’s reputation caused by false statements. It is split into two legal bases that a person can sue for; Slander and Libel. The law of defamation protects a person’s reputation through ensuring that freedom of speech is not abused to cause detriment to a person’s name, company or family.
Slander is defamation of a person through a transient form of communication, generally speech.
Libel is defamation of a person through a permanent form of communication, mostly the written word.
Defamation is not limited to linguistic forms; visual forms such as photographs, paintings, illustrations, status and bodily gestures can also be regarded as defamatory. The claimant must prove in a case of slander that the effect of the defamation has actually been damaging to them. There is no such requirement in a case of libel.
An example of a defamation case: Twitter is a popular online space were businesses, public figures and professionals can very quickly have their hard-earned reputations jeopardized by comments, reviews and allegations, where a post is defamatory and can cause significant damage. The re-tweeting and sharing of the post increases the damage and the person whose reputation is in question may be able to sue for damages if the evidence proves that it has or will cause serious reputational harm.
How could libel or slander potentially affect you or your work?
Libel or Slander could affect your work as a visual artist by having an exhibition or display of my work publicly criticised in a negative and damaging way for example, if it was published in a newspaper, magazine or catalogue or if the exhibition/ show was criticised online on public spaces such as Twitter, Facebook or popular forums. Both the written and verbal slander of artwork if proven with evidence to damage the reputation of the artist then legal action can be pursued. Another example would be if imagery or photographs of the artist's work were used without permission for slander.
Contracts & Employment law
A contract is a written document that gives both the employer and the employee certain rights, for example, the right to be paid for your services/work done. The employer may include certain information regarding the job role, holiday pay, agreed wages, sick pay, length of employment and any legal requirements to be adhered to within the employment. The employee, such as a freelance position, may wish to include timeframes for payment on completion on their services, agreed budgets, materials costs, hours and rate of pay. Both parties will then be bound by the details mentioned on the contracts unless agreed and edited whereby if there is a breach of contract then either party will be liable for breach of the contract which maybe taken to court.
There are 7 types of contracts;
- Full-time or part-time contract for an indefinite period.
- Agency staff or temporary employment contract.
- Self-employed contract.
- An internship employment contract.
I am going to discuss three of them;
- Zero hours employment contracts are generally for ad hock job roles where workers would often be working as and when needed where there are normally no set hours of work for that position. Zero hours workers are though entitled to statutory annual leave. As an employee you are not bound to do any particular hours of work, are not contracted to work when needed and can refuse the hours if they are unavailable. For the employer it means that it if the job role hours change frequently this maybe an ideal solution to not have to pay workers when there is no work to do, they are able to change their employees regularly and choose when and what the hours are.
- Self-employed contracts; these are contracts set up between a self-employed person and the commission funder/financer or the supplier of tools and equipment for particular jobs undertaken. A self-employed worker is not an employee of an organisation or business they work for themselves or are a business themselves. Most self-employed workers are responsible for their own activities and services they supply and are not governed by a manager or business. This enables the self-employed worker to choose their own job roles, business services and rates of pay.
- An Internship employment contract; Interns can be considered to be a volunteer, a worker or an employee. Each has varying rights and entitlements. If the intern does regular work or employed, they can gain employment rights such as minimum wage if they are considered to be a worker but if an intern is only a volunteer, generally these are not paid roles neither are internships as part of an education course; both are not eligible for minimum wage.
-Working to a brief; Often when working with clients a brief will be written up to confirm and outline who you are working for and what is expected of you and your services. The brief can be documented, written or verbal depending on what is agreed. The different types of briefs are:
- A Negotiated brief – This is where the client and employer will come to a specified agreement upon the brief of the project which will include the final ideas/outcome for both the employer and client.
- A contractual brief – Is a legal document, created between the employer and a client which is easy and clear to read outlining the duties that will be required by the company, this document is legally bound and all content must be completed.
-A co-operative brief – Within this type of brief there are usually two or more companies that are hired by the client to work on the specified brief and project to be completed. After both parties have received this brief, they can then proceed to work together to produce the product. If there is a disagreement or conflict in ideas there can be a negotiated brief in order to resolve these issues.
- An informal brief – An informal brief is less professional than that of a traditional brief, whether it outlines the project verbally and does not require any means of a written document. There is a discussion conducted between the client and the employer whereby they come to a general agreement over the details of the contract.
- A formal brief – A formal written brief is a document that includes detailed information about what the client wants the company to achieve. It usually refrains from including any unwanted information and this brief may not always be classified as a legal document.
- A commission – A commission brief is where a company/business employs an individual/business to create an artwork/product/project specifically for them.
- A competition – A brief is created for the design/production of a specific project/product. It is a document that includes all instructions to competitors for participating in a competition usually including their ethos. All the finished projects created will then be judged and the most impressive one is made the winner and usually taken into production or published by the client.
Penalties for breach of contract – Enforcement of contracts is a necessary part of any legally binding contract; each party expects to obtain the benefit of the deal agreed by the contract. If a party doesn’t receive the benefit of the contract by reason of the other parties' breach, the innocent party has a legal right to recover compensation for their loss in damages through court proceedings.
An example of breach of employment contract is Apple suing former iPhone chip designer for breach of contract. This is an example of where a previous employee of Apple is being sued when he left the firm to start his own chip development company and Apple accused him of breaking employment agreements. Apple accused Gerard Williams III of creating the new company whilst still an employee of Apple, designing and selling similar products to Apple and attempting to recruit staff from Apples employees. This case was taken to court to pursue the allegations.
How could employment contracts affect you?
Self-employed artist employment contracts are important to have written up when working with galleries, businesses and collaborations with other creative professionals. It is vital to have agreements written up and agreed by all parties within an arts project to make sure that each party fulfills their agreement and that payments/part payments, hire costs and terms, agreed work to be completed and additional requirements are met by each individual to complete the project for a specified deadline. This means that if any party fails to complete their agreed contract, then action can be taken with all or part of the agreeing parties involved. By stating who is liable for what it makes sure that parties do not take the blame and or are unable to receive payment due to another person’s breach of contract.
2010 Equality Act (EQA) – WEBSITE ACCESSIBILITY
The Equality Act came into place in 2010, updating a number of anti-discrimination laws relating to race, gender, age, disability, religious belief and sexual orientation, among other factors. It includes information previously found in the Equal Pay Act of 1970 and the Disability Discrimination Act of 1995, this is the go-to piece of legislation that all companies need to consider when designing and creating their websites to make sure they are accessible and inclusive. It provides Britain with a discrimination law that protects individuals from unfair treatment and promotes a fair and more equal society.
The 9 new pieces of legislation that have merged are:
-The Sex Discrimination Act 1975
-The Race Relations Act 1976
-The Disability Discrimination Act 1995
-The Employment Equality (Religion or Belief) Regulations 2003
-The Employment Equality (Sexual Orientation) Regulations 2003
-The Employment Equality (Age) Regulations 2006
-The Equality Act 2006, Part 2
-The Equality Act (Sexual Orientation) Regulations 2007.
The EQA prohibits the discrimination by providers of services, good and facilities which includes commercial web services.
Disabled access to websites under UK law.
If a business has a website, it should be made accessible to disabled users, if a site does not meet certain design standards, then they are liable to be sued for discrimination. Every website should ensure that all the information is easily accessible for all users on various devices such as web-enabled TV’s, mobile phones and tablets and allowing access for users who have different screen sizes, browser types, settings or those without plug ins such as Flash.
So, here’s a few things to consider when designing a site:
Sites should be Perceivable, Operable, Understandable & Robust and focused around these headings:
Motor skills- Some users may have difficulties with detailed mouse movements or not able to use the keyboard keys needed. Therefore, there should be access to using the browser and to move through the links via just the keyboard as well as make sure any imagemaps don’t need specifically precise mouse positioning this enables all users to use the site. There should are also options for users to use assistive devices that enable them to use the keyboard.
Vision – For content creators and developers it is essential to understand how blind people use the web. Blind people can use screen reader software with the option to change colour palettes, contrast and enlarge type size. The structure of the page must include HTML markups to allow the content to be read aloud, and ALT text should be used to translate the content using speech synthesisers or Braille displays.
Cognitive – By using helpful and clear illustrations, logical content and navigation. Users with disabilities need captions and transcripts, these are also useful for any user when navigating a site. A sites readability should be around the average age of 9 years old, using bold text to emphasize keywords to the reader, meaningful subheadings, bullet points to summarise content and make the content in sections readable and bite sized.
Hearing –Some users have hearing impairments that may affect their ability to listen to video therefore subtitles and transcripts should be used and made available.
Overall all websites should be accessible for any reader and essential the site functions on all types of screens from desktop to mobile phones.
An example of a legal case of EQA online accessibility is this kind of lack of accessibility in the lawsuit claiming that Beyonce Parkwood Entertainment website violates the Disabilities Act as it failed to accommodate visually impaired users as they did not have the same equal access to its products and services. A lack of ALT text meant some users were unable to determine what is available on the website and browse or make purchases. This has led to the pursuing of damages for those who have been subject to this unlawful discrimination.
How could the EQA affect you or your work? If your website doesn’t meet the standards required you or your business can be sued for damages from those who have been subject to unlawful discrimination by not allowing equal accessibility to the site. By making sure that all sites have settings such as ALT text, provide subtitles, transcripts and HTML markups and follow all guidelines for being inclusive then legal action can be avoided.
Why are ethics important?
The role of ethics in our society is very necessary because it has a large influence on today, as well as the future. We need to learn about good ethics because they guide our decisions, make us who we are and determine our future. Ethics are learned throughout our lives as we associate with others.
Business ethics help ensure a good reputation for the company, corporations establish business ethics to promote integrity among their employees and gain trust from key stakeholders such as investors and consumers. When a company has a good reputation for consistently being ethical in how they source and build products and treat employees, customers and the community, more people will want to do business with the company so this in turn will help create their revenue. Social media ethics also are important within this.
An example of questionable business ethics is the dispute between Apple and Samsung and the business ethics of Patent infringement. Where Apple accused Samsung of infringing on seven patents and the jurors found that Samsung infringed on all but one regarding the design of the iPad.
How or what ethical dilemma could affect your work? If a company is not ethical and does not have the same ideas and ethical belief you may not want to have your name linked with them with regards to business as this could affect your business or this could potentially create a risk for the future if the company was to be sued for issues relating to this. If you are found to be directly linked then you may be liable which could have an impact on your employment alternatively if you breached ethical boundaries personally you could be taken to court and sued for compensation.
Relationship with clients
It is important to have good client relationships such as listening to client needs and respecting client wishes. Positive customer relations help you connect with your customers on a much more personal level. When you connect with the client you are much more likely to understand their requirements, resolve their problems and create a sense of mutual understanding. Having this understanding will help you to have good communication and avoid any unnecessary misunderstandings.
An example of client relations was the article in the Guardian whereby The Guardian business pages reported that the average SME is owed more than £31,000. This translates to £30bn across the UK economy. The problem occurs because customers pay their suppliers as late as possible to ease the customer’s cash flow problems. They are pushing the financial risks onto their suppliers, which is unfair and an abuse of trust. Trust is vital in a good ethical relationship. It is far better for customers and suppliers to work together and share the risk, and be truthful and honourable in their undertakings.
How could this client relations affect you and your work?
If you do not have a clear understanding between yourself and a client then it can be a timely and costly situation whereby miss communication leads to mistakes and errors that could be avoided. So, it's best to make sure that everyone is on the same page and agreements made before agreeing to and signing a contract for work or for someone to work for you.
The ‘media effects’ debate
Media effects refers to the many ways individuals and society may be influenced by both news and entertainment mass media, including film, television, radio, newspapers, books, magazines, websites, video games, and music. This influence from mass media can affect humans in aspects of their life which can include voting a certain way, influence an individual's views and beliefs and skewing a person's knowledge on a specific topic due to having being given false information which they believe to be true from media outputs.
An example of ‘media effects’ being cited is the sharing of fake news on social media platforms which is a global concern and most recently the spread of false news about the Pandemic. Such issues have been raised by governments worldwide as the information spread has been controversial and/or made up. This included India whereby its government and ministry banned certain YouTube channels, Twitter accounts and Facebook profiles as they believed that they contained false information.
How might the ‘media effects’ debate affects your work?
Social media has had a huge impact on how businesses find and communicate with their audiences. So, making sure that when using these social media apps and websites all your information is correct, legal and within copyright standards and that you have your own legal protection needed for designs and work. Positive reviews and social presence can really boost your business but on the flip side negative reviews and comments can also be quickly spread or go viral which can be destructive for anyone who encounters it specifically businesses as they rely on good advertising. So, making sure your social presence is well looked after and watched carefully means your business is advertised in the right way to the right audience.
Representation
Media representations are the ways in which the media portrays particular groups, communities, ideas or topics from a particular ideological, philosophical or cultural perspective. The ways in which aspects of society notably gender, race, ethnic and social classes among others are presented to audiences by the media. Media representation entails media ‘re-presentation’ or ‘re-creation’ of reality.
Media or industry example of representation:
A good example of media representation is Ellie Goldstein who embodies what it means to be inspirational. The 19-year-old British model, who has Down’s syndrome, is taking the fashion world by storm, showing just what self-belief can achieve and become the first model with down syndrome to work with the Gucci brand. Stereotypically people with disabilities have not in the past been known or used within popular fashion companies and their media exploits. She was employed by Gucci, a top fashion company, and became one of the first models representing people with down syndrome. This is a big move by Gucci to be seen to be accepting of all and moving into the next era of creating a neurodiverse culture representing a new language showing pride in disabilities, gender, race and sexuality. This language includes a preference for identity-first to include the ‘person with disabilities’ focusing on someone's identification before their disability, thus creating a new understanding for how people should talk about and refer to people with disabilities.
How could representation affect you or your work?
It is important to relate to your target audience whether you are offering a service, a product or are a creative professional making your way in the current media and social platforms. If your work is not represented correctly, is not based around equality and represented the right way within your company ethics as well as media outputs then this creates a bad representation and could lead to the media damaging your business, it would also not fit within the EQA.
Blasphemy
Blasphemy refers to great disrespect shown to someone or something or to something said or done that shows this kind of disrespect.
An example of this would be the humorous post put out into social media by the popular high street food company Greggs, where they posted a photo of a sausage roll with one bite taken out of the middle of it. Due to being posted on social media it received a lot of responses both positive comments as well as statements referring to it being blasphemous, that it was disrespectful to be eaten that way as stereotypically people would conform to a normal way of eating the sausage roll. https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/greggs-sausage-roll-picture-twitter-17691043
How could blasphemy effect you or your work?
There has been a lot of discussions relating to tensions between freedom of artistic expression and tolerance and sensitivity. Where art is seen to be criticizing someone or something, such as a religion, which can be believed to create aversive reactions and a desire to ban art or blasphemous art that is controversial. So, some consideration as to what maybe blasphemous or have a negative response maybe an area for discussion when figuring out the design or creating pieces of art that could be very controversial, at least until you are a well-established artist!! As it may restrict the spaces in which you are able to display this ‘controversial’ artwork, cause media outrage and worst-case legal action. Unless this is what your intentions are?
If you have reached the end of this blog without getting bored then fair play, off you go and do some more creative research. The realms of search engines and sites worldwide will inform you more on these interesting subjects, I bid you good luck! Caio!
