MEDIA AND INFORMATION LITERACY

TOPIC: Legal, Ethical and Societal Issues in Media and Information

To become a media and information literate individual, you must know the legal, ethical
and societal issues associated with the consumption and production of media information and
put the proper ways of consuming and producing information into practice.
1. Ethical vs Legal

 LAW – is a set of universally accepted rules, accepted and enforced within a certain
territory or entity.
 ETHICS – is related to the moral obligation of knowing what is right and wrong that
guides people to choose what is accepted over unaccepted, and to do what needs to be
done and what is just.
 Not all things legal are ethical, and vice versa.
For example:
A businessman pays a journalist to advertise his products in the latter’s column. The law
does not prohibit the journalist to receive the task, so if the journalist accepts the job, it is
technically LEGAL. However, ENVELOPMENTAL JOURNALISM, or the practice of bribing
journalists, is UNETHICAL. A journalist wants to expose a corrupt politician by getting the latter’s
bank transaction record as proof. The law says that what the journalist is about to do is theft
and is subject to sanction but revealing corruption for the benefit of the many can be considered
ethical.

 As users of media and as producers & consumers of information, you must be able to
know what is both ethical and legal.
2. Intellectual Property

 Anything that a person creates, designs or invents that can be treated as an asset or
physical property is his/her Intellectual Property (IP).
 Generally, IP owners are covered by one or more rights: copyright, trademark and
patent.
o Copyright- is the exclusive legal right of an IP owner to reproduce, sell or
distribute a material that he/she has created.
-A poem or written story, a choreography, an artwork or a photograph
and some intellectual works are just some of the original creations that
are protected by copyright.
 Examples:
- Some creators put their work online to be downloaded for a fee. But it is a
copyright violation to download a movie, TV show, music, software or e-book from a website
that is not owned by the creator.
- You’re allowed to record a TV show at home to watch it later. But it becomes
a copyright infringement if you pass your recorded copy to other people., or you reproduce a
bunch of copies to sell and profit from it.
o Trademark – is a name, word, slogan, symbol, among others, that identifies a
product or organization. It is characterized by the symbols  and ™. If you see
these symbol, that means it is a registered trademark.
o It is illegal to use the symbols  and ™ for products that are not yet fully
registered under a national trademark/patent office.

Copyright is geared toward literary and artistic work, such as books and videos while Trademark
protects items that help define a company brand, such as logo.

o Patent – is a government license given to industrial processes and inventions

that gives its creator an exclusive right to use, sell, or manufacture the said IPs.
Example:
The light bulb was patented to Thomas Edison, therefore, he was the only
person who could sell the product during the effectivity of his patent.

Patent terms, if maintained correctly, vary but generally go for up to 20 years. After the patent expires
the invention can be used by others as much as they wish. A patent may also expire if the inventor or
owner fails to pay the required fee on time.
Worksheet #1

Give five examples of trademarks and patents.

EX.
Trademark – Starbucks

Differentiate the following terms:

1. Copyright, trademark, and patent
2. Economic right and Moral right
3. Public domain and Creative Commons license
4. Plagiarism and privacy
5. Copyright infringement and fair use