Legal
Libal Law
You can be sued for damages if you publish or
broadcast things about a person which are untrue and damage their reputation
(defame them) The law was created to
protect individuals or organisations from unwarranted, mistaken or untruthful
attacks on their reputation.
Example : - In November, Conservative
peer Lord McAlpine announced his intention to seek libel damages from Twitter
users over incorrect and defamatory insinuations linking him to child sex
abuse. Lord McAlpine has dropped threatened legal action against Twitter users
with fewer than 500 followers and instructed his lawyers to concentrate their
efforts on seeking £50,000 in damages from Mrs Bercow, in what is expected to
be the first High Court Twitter libel trial.
Obscene Publications Act Law
The
definition of this is content that is "likely to deprave and corrupt"
the audience for which it is intended.Lawyers may need to check whether a production
breaks this law before it is released. Content such as sexually explicit,
violent and/or drug taking is reviewed for suitability. Decisions are made
dependent on factors such as age range of the audience, the time a production
is broadcast.
Example :-
The Human Centipede
II (Full Sequence) is a sequel to the
film The Human Centipede (First
Sequence), which was classified Although the concept of the
film was undoubtedly tasteless and disgusting it was a relatively traditional
and conventional horror film and the Board concluded that it was not in breach
of our Guidelines at '18'. '18' uncut for cinema and DVD release by the BBFC in
2010.
Official Secrets Act Law
It is a criminal offence to obtain or publish
any information from a serving or former member of the security and
intelligence services or from certain categories of civil servants or public
contractors where that disclosure would be damaging.
Example :-
WikiLeaks.org, the online organization that posted tens of thousands of
classified military field reports about the Afghan war on Sunday, says its goal
in disclosing secret documents is to reveal “unethical behavior” by governments
and corporations. In a telephone interview from London, the organization’s founder, Julian
Assange, said the documents would reveal broader and more pervasive levels
of violence in Afghanistan than the military or the news media had previously
reported. “It shows not only the severe incidents but the general squalor of
war, from the death of individual children to major operations that kill
hundreds,” he said. Copyright Law
This law exists to protect people's creative
endeavours so that they can properly benefit from their work. If such
protection didn't exist and people were able to copy or sell or profit from
another's work, there would be little incentive for people to create in the
first place. Programme-makers are responsible for ensuring that all necessary
clearances (copyright, trademarks etc.) have been obtained for their
programmes.
Example:-
SEARCH GIANT Google was fined €25,000 for breaking Belgian copyright
law for every day since an initial ruling in September, amounting to a whopping
€3.45 million.
It published links to newspapers in Belgium without permission a a Belgian court said. Google was sued by a group of Belgian publishers last September, charged with breaking copyright by listing stories and brief extracts on its news aggregation site.
According to reports,MSN and Yahoo have also heard from m'learned fiends over similar matters.
Privacy Law
If a media company publishes information about someone which is information that should be considered private, that is to say, information in respect of which you had a ‘reasonable expectation of privacy’, then legal action for misuse of private information can be brought under the Human Rights Act 1998.
Example
The News
International phone-hacking scandal — dubbed "Hackgate",
"Rupertgate", or "Murdochgate" by the press — is a controversy
involving the now defunct News of the World and other British
newspapers published by News International, a subsidiary of the
then-News
Corporation. Employees of the newspaper were accused of engaging in phone hacking, police
bribery, and exercising improper influence in the pursuit of publishing
stories. Investigations conducted from 2005 to 2007 concluded that the paper's
phone hacking activities were limited to celebrities, politicians and members of
the British
Royal Family. In July 2011, it was revealed that the phones of murdered
schoolgirl Milly Dowler, relatives of deceased
British soldiers, and victims of the 7/7 London bombings were also
accessed, resulting in a public outcry against News Corporation and owner Rupert Murdoch.
Advertiser boycotts contributed to the closure of the News of the World
on 10 July, ending 168 years of publication.
Continued public pressure later forced News Corporation to cancel its proposed
takeover of the British telecommunications company BSkyB.
