Task 1 - Part C - Legal and Ethical Considerations
Copyright is important because you don't want people stealing your work or ideas and using them as their own on another project. A writer you will have the copyrights to your work and if someone else stole that work you could sue them for it as you own that work and no one else can use it. Stealing someone else’s work is also called Plagiarism.
Things that are censored out during TV can be seen as harmful or offensive to someone or to a group of people. As a writer you would take responsibility to anything that a viewer would take as offensive or harmful, this is called Libel and this means that someone is responsible for their actions. Libel is also when someone who writes a script with a part in it that intentionally ruins the reputation of someone or cause hatred.
The writer might be biased because they want to concentrate on a specific part of a project. This could mean being biased towards a specific person or a group of people. This means part of a script could be really good and detailed but another part could be bad and not detailed enough to get the storyline across to the viewers.
Censorship is when some of the footage used in a film could be harmful for some viewers to watch and therefore the script writer might want to eliminate it from the script. Media products are giving guidelines like U, PG, 12, 12A, 15, 18 so that the viewers know what audiences the film is suitable for.
Watershed is where certain programs will be on between 9pm and 5:30am and this is where programs will have more adult content as they aim at a different target audience at night as they do in the day as kids will be watching TV during the day and will be in bed at night. Only programmes that are suitable for family viewing are shown before 9pm and after 5:30am.
