The technological advances of the 21st century have opened a plethora of opportunities for people all over the world in terms of communication and, therefore, business, education, and the related activities. However, the creation of a new environment has also triggered a range of challenges for these participants to face, the issue regarding the ownership of intellectual property being the key one.
Even though the basic legal principles concerning legal usage of digital data have been transferred into the designated realm, some of the principles of private and public use of digital data. Although navigating the online legal environment may be tricky, copyrighted data can be identified rather easily, and the terms of fair use can be applied adequately to acknowledge the rights of media owners (Copyright basics, 2015).
The benefits of the availability of online media are obvious. First, pictures, which can be found online, and be used as the means to acquire information in a fast and efficient manner. In other words, the media under analysis can be utilized for the purposes of self-education, retrieval and the further analysis of information, exemplification of a specific phenomenon or object, etc.
Additionally, the media represented online can be used as the means of expressing the reality in an artistic manner. Once the author of the media element in question is recognized, appreciated and given credit for their job, the effects of the media element under analysis become truly ample. The significance of modern media stretches to the point where it defines the tendencies in the contemporary society.
Indeed, media shapes people’s perception of reality by offering them a different way of looking at it; as a result, people can evaluate a certain phenomenon from different perspectives. Therefore, come to a certain conclusion. One might argue that the ambiguity of the strong effect of modern media should be brought up. Indeed, the ample influence that modern media has on the people using it can be abused to promote a certain idea or concept to the target audience for the reasons of a personal gain (Cvetkovski, 2013).
However, the abundance of visual media that most people are exposed to nowadays also has its problems and drawbacks, the copyright issue and the right of usage being the key ones. Even though the humankind seems to have made a long way from the point at which it was introduced to the concept of online media, some of the issues related to the copyright for online products still remain on the agenda.
The reasons for the misconceptions to emerge are quite obvious; being digital, the images cannot be technically considered material and, therefore, the legal regulations are not as easily applicable to them as to the traditional forms of media. In addition, the use of digital media is much harder to trace or prove since the evidence is easy to delete (Tussey, 2013).
Therefore, the legal implications of using photos without the authors’ permission are rather vague, though admittedly unfavorable for the criminal in any case. Thus, when it comes to determining the ways of regulating the use of digital visual media, one must admit that the online environment needs a strong set of ethical principles for the users of online content to comply with.
Particularly, the issue of a copyrighted content deserves to be spelled out in the aforementioned code of ethics so that any further right infringements could be prevented successfully and that the emerging issues could be addressed correspondingly.
Reference List
Copyright basics. (2015). Web.
Cvetkovski, T. (2013). Copyright and popular media: Liberal villains and technological change. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Tussey, P. D. (2013). Complex copyright: Mapping the information ecosystem. Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.