Legal Issues in Media

Legal Issues / Law	Explanation of Law	Application to Media	Examples
Intellectual Property Rights (IP Law)	The Ownership of ideas -The law protects your ideas You don’t need to create the product to prove it so long as you have evidence it was your idea. Trade marks - Used to protect brands, logos, slogans. -renewed every 10 years.	Copy right -automatically applied to all physical products. -Lasts 70 years Applies to- -song writing     -TV show concepts -Characters        -logo designs -authors work    -brand names And ideas	Disney- Zootopia in the EU had to be changed to Zootroplias due to a real zoo in Europe called Zootopia. Illegal streaming- All forms of illegal streaming breaches copy right laws. Star wars- prop designer own the rights to sell storm trooper helmets as he retrained creative rights to them.
Libel	-Written false information about someone to tarnish or damage their reputation  -Must be physically written, an image or spoken word recorded. - Can lead to a law suit	-The main offender is social media. (Twitter, Facebook etc.) -Magazines -Newspapers- fact check everything to avoid this. -TV and radio.	Katie Hopkins- Lost £24k from Tweeting Libel that a woman defaced war memorials Frankie Boyle- Won £54k from the Daily Mail for wrongly accusing him of being racist.
Data Protection act	-The promise to protect users data -if you have data on people you can only use it for what they agreed. -Data must be accurate and up to date -must be consensually shared.	-Terms and conditions -websites- Name, age, email -Social media- some share your location -online shopping- banking details TV License- watch you’re watching	Facebook- Data breach, 50 million people’s data is stolen. They were sued. British Airways- Everyone who flew within the past weeks data was stolen, including credit card details. These are cases where the data protection act failed and it put millions of people in danger of identity theft, credit card fraud and many other issues.

Copy right, designs and patents act 1988	-if you have made a physical product you control how others use it. -CR- lasts 70 years after death	-music Radio, iTunes, illegal downloading, Spotify -films and Tv Streaming services, illegal streaming Images and artwork	Taylor Swift- took her music off YouTube to prevent illegal downloading Prince- once he died Spotify could use all his music.
Slander	-carries the same legal implications as libel but it involves spreading rumours in spoken word.	-live TV and Radio -YouTube -interviews -quoting in newspapers	Subway- policeman accused employing of poisoning his food, lost the case and had to pay subway
Human Rights act 2014	-the treatment of others must be fair and equal irrelevant of class or social opinions -changes and updates as society changes	-treating your cast and crew equally (correct pay and breaks) -discrimination in media industry’s	Simpsons- removing a racial stereotype character from the show as it offended people of that race Pepsi- showing violent protest in adverts and claiming Pepsi can end it.
Freedom of information act	-the public has the right to access information that is held by public sector organisations	-news -magazines -radio -pod casts -newspaper	Telegraph- revealed that 500,00 carer visits to the elderly only last 5 minutes Daily Mail- 12 murderers, 10 rapists and 100s of criminals escaped police custody These two examples show that this information was kept from the public and was only recently released, which could endanger the public.