LEGAL & ETHICAL CONTRAINTS

VIDEO RECORDING ACT

The Video Recording Act was issued in 1984 saying that commercial video
recordings for sale/hire must carry a classification. This classification must be
agreed by an authority given by The Home Office. This act also put age ratings
on films, designating certain videos with certain ages. With this it was also
decided for this age rating information to be displayed on the packaging. This act
was renewed in 2010.

COPYRIGHT LAW
Copyright is having the legal right to print, publish, perform, film, or record
literary, artistic, or musical material. This means no one else is allowed to use it
and call it their own work, this is a legal matter.
Copyright is important as it protects peoples work from being stolen. Not only
this, but you can gain income from allowing others to use your work, if they use
it without your permission then you have the right to sue them for it. The fact
you people can buy the rights to use it means you as the producer of the work
have full control as to who uses it and for what. There are two main purposes of
copyright laws, one of them being to protect the producer/publisher and to keep
their work safe. The other reason would be to promote the progress of peoples
work.
The copyright law protects a variety of different materials: literary works; musical
works; dramatic works; pantomimes and choreographic works; pictorial, graphic
and sculptural works; motion pictures and other audio-visual works; sound
recordings; architectural work. Copyright laws cover pretty much everything
except the names of groups / businesses / products / services etc.
Breaching copyright laws is a serious offence. There are different consequences
depending on what the producer / publisher wants to do. You may get a letter
from the publisher explaining that it is illegal for them to use the work without
permission and in that letter you will be asked to remove the work. Another
consequence is a demand sent to you explaining you must cease and desist the
work, or your internet server will automatically take care of this. One of the
worse consequences of infringing copyright laws would be that you could face
fines of up to 50000. Jail time is also possible, depending on the extent of
infringement.
Copyright infringement despite the efforts to stop it from happening, it still does.
MTV owner, Viacom, recently sued YouTube $1billion (520 million) for massive
intentional copyright infringement. The reason for this is YouTube showed some
of MTVs videos that had been taken from the TV. Viacom states that 160,000
individual YouTube clips breach copyright laws. The videos consist of recordings
from the television taken by members of the public then uploaded to the video
sharing site. The fact YouTube allowed these recordings to go on the site is a
huge infringement of copyright laws.

CINEMATOGRAPH FILMS ACT (1927)

This is a UK act, designed to stimulate the declining British film industry, coming
into practice in 1928. It did this by getting cinemas to show a quota of British
films over 10 years. This was done to promote the vertically integrated film
industry, meaning they wanted all control over their films, they wanted to be the
ones to make, distribute & market them. This act specified that: The film must be
made by a British owned company; all scenes and photographs must be from the
British commonwealth/Empire; the author of the original work must also be
British; 75% of salaries must go to British people.
It turns out this act wasnt as successful as originally hoped, however the films
produced from this act may have never been produced if this wasnt put into
place. However this act was also to blame for quota quickies. This is the
emergence of low-cost, poor-quality films produced by Americans based in the
UK in order to fulfil the requirements of the act. However this is said to be a
benefit to British film as it portrayed real British films in a better way. They were
unique to British culture.

IMPORTANCE OF ETHICAL ISSUES

Ethics are the morals defining the way a person / group acts. In the television
industry this would be the way they broadcast shows, for example the times
shows are on. Is that suitable considering the content of the show? There is an
Equal Opportunities Act which was established in 1995, it was then replaced in
2011. The objectives of this act were to promote recognition and acceptance of
everyones right to equality of opportunity and to eliminate, as far as possible,
discrimination against other people.
The BBC has editorial guidelines, which are regulations that they follow. These
regulations involve ethical issues. In terms of language, these guidelines state
that they are aware different words cause different amounts of offence
depending on speaker and context etc. The words considered offensive at all
times are: sexual swearwords; terms of racist or ethnic abuse; terms of sexual
and sexist abuse or abuse referring to sexuality; pejorative terms relating to
illness or disabilities; casual or derogatory use of holy names or religious words
and especially in combination with other strong language. The guidelines also
state that strong language must not be before the watershed, on radio, or when
children are likely to be viewing at this time. The only time this is an exception is
if it is justified by the context. It is very important to have these sorts of
guidelines in place as it protects young people from being exposed to bad
language, possibly a bad influence. It also allows viewing to be more family
targeted.
In the TV & film industry equal opportunities are very important. They allow
everyone no matter what disability etc. to have a chance in this industry. BBFC
(British Board of Film Classification) have an equal opportunities policy in which
they pride themselves on being open to any person over the age of 18. They aim
to ensure all job applicants are treated in the same way and that nobody is
placed at a disadvantage. This moves me on to the encouragement of diversity.
It is very important nowadays to encourage equal opportunities and diversity

within the TV & film industry, the BBFC equal opportunities page would be a
good example of this as they are promoting the fact they want a variety of
people to help them out. Another example would be this BFI promotion for
diversity. http://www.bfi.org.uk/about-bfi/policy-strategy/diversity, they state that
at the moment only 0.3% of the film workforce are disabled and that needs to
change. They commit themselves to diversity and want to change that statistic.
Film has the potential to be the most representative and diverse form of our age
to reflect changing attitudes, people, landscape but we are not there yet!
There are many ethical issues to be considered within the media sector: social
issues and sensitivities representation of gender, representation of religious
beliefs; linguistic usages; accessibility. It is important to put all of these in
perspective to avoid complaints, resulting in removing the TV show or film from
air. IF guidelines are breached then Ofcom have the right to remove the show.

REPRESENTATION OF GENDER
Throughout TV & film we are used to women being represented differently to
men. For years now there have been issues due to this. The female characters
tend to only serve the male needs. For example being portrayed as housewives.
An example of this would be this Persil washing powder advert aired on the
television in 1959, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D93fK9vBnMg, from this
advert we can see they have used only female actors. This suggests that
washing up as a womans job. Throughout the commercial the narrator was
saying how the new formula allows your hands to be extra smooth and soft. This
relates to the interests of women as soft skin (body image) is key to women, also
men but women in particular. This happened a lot more in older times than now
as now we are focusing more on equal opportunities, however unfortunately we
do still come across this. A more recent example would be this article about the
representation of women, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/13/women-inthe-media-female_n_2121979.html, it states that throughout television 44.3% of
female character were employed, where as 54.5% of male characters were
employed. This again represents women to be housewives and not fit for full jobs
which is a representation from years ago which we are now trying to rectify.
OnePoll asked 1000 women aged 16-30 their thoughts on the representation of
women in TV & film, over half said that women were not shown fairly and in an
accurate way. The survey discovered that a lot of this happened to be genre
specific, for example 42% said women were portrayed the worst in films in the
horror genre. Body image is a main factor when it comes to the issues of gender
representation. With the increasing pressure to look a certain way, 68% of the
female candidates said they rarely see women promoting a realistic body image.
Men are supposed to be represented in a masculine way; this involves having
strength, power, sexual attractiveness, physique and independence. However, it
is said that men are not portrayed in a realistic way or in this masculine way,
they seem to be portrayed as the jokers/fools. For example in beer adverts; the
typical conventions of those would be a slouched man who finds comfort in his
beer. He tends to rely on the beer to make him happy. TV shows such as Family
Guy & The Simpsons have depicted the man as lazy and stupid. Both male
protagonists in these shows are lazy and stupid who depend on their wives.
However the women are still shown to rely on the men. Another example of this

would be the TV comedy Everybody Loves Raymond. Raymond being the male
protagonist in the show he is portrayed as a goof and is the cause of the joke in
most occasions.

REPRESENTATION OF RELIGIOUS BELIEFS

Representation of religious beliefs is very important in the media, TV & film in
particular. You need to be very careful when portraying religious beliefs that it is
done accurately to avoid offending people and their beliefs. Ofcom have
designed a set of regulations for when it comes to representing religion. They
aim for it to be done accurately and carefully avoiding upsetting anyone. These
rules state that religious matters must not be subject to abusive treatment;
identifying the religion is key, there should be no misunderstanding and the
religion should be clear to the audience; religious programmes must not heavily
promote their religion; all religious claims must be truthful and accurate.
It has been said that the BBC have misrepresented the Christian religion, they
tend to represent them as weak or a bigot. A BBC spokesman stated that
they have strict editorial guidelines in which they follow down to a tee therefore
would never misrepresent any religion or their beliefs.

HOW SHOULD MEN & WOMEN BE REPRESENTED?

As mentioned earlier many believe men and women are represented differently
and inaccurately. In a perfect world, men & women would be represented
accurately, meaning we see a variety of different kinds of men & women on our
screens. For example some are represented as lazy & stupid whereas others are
represented successful & hardworking. We should also see an in between, the
average working man. This should be the same with both genders.

DOES YOUR STUDIO REPRESENT PEOPLE FAIRLY IN THEIR FILMS?

Channel 4 in my opinion does represent people fairly, I think this because of the
variety of shows they have they have an open window to represent a range of
people. Channel 4s target audience is the general population. Meaning they
have to relate to a variety of people. I feel they achieve this considering the
variety in shows they have.
It has been said that channel 4 has misrepresented some people, for example
the TV show Benefit Street aired on Channel 4. The guardian stated that they
were misrepresenting the lives on people on welfare. Channel 4 was said to have
focused too much on the criminal side of James Turner Street, Birmingham. They
didnt focus enough on benefits as a whole, three quarters of the show was about
unemployment benefits, therefore putting a bad name to the other people.
Channel 4 insisted that all participants of the show knew what the end result was
going to be and it was all real. Despite this I still feel overall they represent
people fairly as a lot of what they do is documentary based, so following the real
lives of real people rather than scripting it and making people based on
stereotypes.