M2: Legal and ethical issues

                   Legal and Ethical Issues

There are lots of different laws, regulations, legal and ethical issues that I have to consider when creating my It's All About Sheldon Cooper TV magazine. If I didn't follow or consider these things I could be fined, sued, go to prison, offend people and cause contraversy or asked to take my magazine down. In this report, I will write in detail about the different things I have to consider while creating my magazine.

                        Copyright and Creative Commons

 Copyright is a law that states any intellectual property (music, photos, videos, film, graphics...) created by someone is automatically protected unless they say otherwise, by copyright. Copyright stops others from using the artist's work without permission, if they did the artist could take legal action against them. I am taking this into consideration by taking my own photos and editing them for my magazine, this takes away the risk of copyright infringement since I am creating my own intellectual property, this means I can use my assets however I want. The photos I will be taking are: Photos of my Sheldon Cooper model posing differently such as in front of a train, standing and looking superior and standing looking like they are thinking. I will also take photos of Marvel and DC magazines for my front page background and contents page photo background. I will have to take my fonts into consideration such as the Badaboom font from DaFont which is free for personal use (if this was a real magazine I would have to make sure it is free for commercial use, ask the owner or buy the font license), the Bebas Neue font from Google Fonts which is free for any use and the Impact font which is free and was already installed on the Macs. These are creative commons licenses, the owner of the intellectual property allows us to use their property under certain coniditions that have to be followed. An example of a creative commons license is non commercial; this means the owner says the asset cannot be used for commercial use, to make money.

                                             IPSO

 The IPSO (Independent Press Standards Orthority) body regulates and sets laws that newspapers and magazines have to follow. The editors code is the name of the laws. IPSO have the power to enforce legal consequences on magazine and newspaper companies if they don't follow them, I have explained these consequences in the introduction of this report. Here is one of the laws that I would have to follow, there are more but this is a good example: My magazine cannot contain misleading or inaccurate content or information. I will make sure I follow every rule by reading all of them and applying my knowledge of the laws to my magazine.

                                             Libel

 Libel is when a person writes a damaging statement that is hurtful to anothers reputation. I can easily follow this by not writing anything bad about anyone and I can create a draft article to make sure the article isn't libel or could cause any ethical issues.

                                     Ethical Issues

 Not only do I have to consider the legal issues and laws put in place by IPSO, I have to consider the ethical issues my magazine might cause. Ethical issues are issues that would disturb or annoy certain groups of people or our society. My magazine cannot be sexist, contain offensive or disturbing imagery and content, it cannot be racist, influence bad body image and contain bullying. If my Sheldon Cooper TV magazine contained anything unethical, this could cause major contraversy and backlash which would damage the repuation of my magazine, stop good sales and no one would want to read it. For example, bad language such as swear words in my magazine is unethical for children. Therefore, I will be very careful what content I include in my magazine, I could also conduct a questionnaire or focus group to ask if my magazine is ethical.