Legal and Ethical Constraints

Copyright:

Copyright allows creators to have exclusive rights related to the use and circulation of their work that they have created themselves, as it is a legal right and is a form of intellectual property as the work can be classed as a physical piece of property belonging to the creator. The Copyright law allows the designer/ artist to take legal action against the act of plagiarism. This means that other artists have taken someone else’s work, and portrayed it as their own for their own circumstances, or have used their work without sourcing the designer and giving them credit for their work, and finally creating an idea very similar and along the lines of an already existing idea. So when someone breaches a copyright law in the ways stated above, there are different penalties that can be carried out towards the infringer, such as they can vary from getting a polite notice and a letter about taking the work down, before they do so themselves, to the possibility of going to prison or being fined. I have to consider this, if I use other photographers work and so if I include these medias I will reference all their work to avoid breaching the copyright law as the artist deserve the recognition for their work. It is also decency to give the credit to the original designers, as it shows professionalism and avoids infringement and the consequences.

Representation

I will need to take representation into consideration when creating a website. The topics that I will represent in an equal light, are every race, sex, religion and gender to avoid offending any user of my website. An example of this is if you were to make a photography  website, each individual shown in an image should be respectfully and truthfully reflected as an equal member of society. Not only should the physical factors be considered but also the demographics of an audience. This includes somebodies class whether they be high class or working, each person should be valued and given the same opportunity as another. This can relate back to the decency of publishing a website that should be considered because of the language that one can contain (Racist, homophobic, sexist, etc.) this could easily offend an individual and represent them in an incorrect and offensive way.  If a member of an audience feels that they are being represented in a negative, they are able to take legal action and face the consequences such as your website may be suspended or even removed. And if it is luckily not removed it will have its own bad reputation and lose a lot of its income/views. 

Decency:

The Communications Decency Act of 1996 states that “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider”. This means that if a website user says something indecent or inappropriate that the host or website owner is not held responsible. Decency is also about creating content that is suitable for your target audience and that isn’t inappropriate or offensive. Not considering this could lead to the reputation of the website being bad which then could lead to users leaving the website and the website being un-used.

Libel:

Libel is written lies and defamation that could harm a person, business, product or groups reputation. I need to consider this as if I include any designs or content that could harm someone’s reputation I could end up in court due to libel. I am planning on having content within my website which will review and express my opinions on the work, I need to make sure I consider decency and libel which could harm the creator’s reputation. If I did write something that could count as libel this could lead me to been taken to court and paying for the creator’s compensation of the event. 

 

Confidentiality:

When considering legal and ethical issues within web design it is important to keep clients and staffs personal information/details confidential, otherwise you are infringing on the Data Protection Act (1998) which could lead to compensation or the person, or company, going to court. This can result in the person/company losing money or a respectable status.

Privacy:

In web design it is important to consider the safety of the websites users, for example you need to keep their identities and any information given safe from unwanted attention. One way to keep the website user safe is to allow them to make an account to access the website, they can do this by inputting their unique username and password, an example of this can be seen on the social media network Facebook;

Another way to keep users safe is to give them the option to use a nickname rather than their real life name, they can also have the choice of uploading an avatar icon or a picture of themselves. In addition to usernames and passwords, the web users should be able to access and change the security settings of their personal account, for example whether they want to be made public to every one of just public to chosen people (this is mainly applied to social media networks);

It is important to keep this information private otherwise the person, or company, will be infringing on the Data Protection Act (1998), this will result in compensation for the victim or the person/company could go to court, resulting in loss of money and loss of respectable status.