Legal Constraints

Intellectual Property Rights: Intellectual property rights are the rights given to someone over the creation from their own minds. These rights are used to give the person exclusive ownership over there creation for a certain amount of time. This links into copyright that is a legal concept that grants the creator exclusive rights to the use and distribution for a limited time of their product. Design rights are also important as they protect the visual design of objects.

Permissions: If you wanted to use certain content that is already being used on another website, you will need to be granted permission to use this content from the source. In order to gain permission from the source, communication such as an email could be used which then could be saved as evidence. If you was to use some content from another website without getting there permission, this could be classed as a criminal offence and legal action could be taken.

Libel: Libel, which can also refer to defamation, is when a false statement is written that may harm the reputation of an individual, business, product, group, government, religion or nation. This is vital that no libel content appears on the website as this could lead to legal action being taken.

Race Relations Act: The Race Relation Act 2000 outlines that it is illegal to discriminate against someone of a different racial background (race, nationality, colour, or ethnic origin). Therefore, someone should not be treated differently to anyone else according to their religion, culture, race etc.

Obscene Publications Act: This act is to prevent any content on a website which may cause offence to the audience. This could be content such as pornography, strong violence and offensive language. This is valid in web design as it will stop the audience from displaying certain content.

Computer Misuse Act: This act can result in people being prosecuted for a number of things when misusing a computer. The type of things that are illegal when using a computer is hacking into other people’s private accounts/systems, helping someone else gain access or misusing protected software.

Data Protection Act: When using the internet, it may ask you to enter personal details in certain situations such as when you are purchasing an item or signing up for a newsletter etc. This is where the Data Protection Act was put into places as this protects the individual’s personal information and stops others from accessing this information such as the government, organisations and other businesses. If anyone wants to use any data for a specific reason, they will need to follow certain protocols, this can be to use the data lawfully and fairly, it is accurate and not modified, it is secure and is kept no longer than needs be.

Accessibility: Accessibility within a website means that the website should be accessible to everyone. People who may have certain disabilities need to be able to understand, navigate around and interact with the website. This can also relate to the older generation who may find it difficult to use a website and to navigate around it. People may also struggle with reading the content on the screen and therefore a solution for this would be to have a voice over reading the content on the page.

Contracts: There are many different contracts that can be put in place when receiving a job in the web industry. Full time and part time employment are available however; there are different types of contracts that are also used. There are fixed term contracts where a company will hire you for a fixed amount of time, for example 12 months. These contracts tend to be used when the company are not guaranteed jobs and can hire people for a certain amount of time. Quite a lot of jobs related to the web industry such as web designers are freelance which means that a company will hire them for a limited time. When companies are taking on new jobs/projects, the majority of the time it will include a brief. There are several different briefs available such as contractual, commission, competition, tender etc. These briefs have to be followed and kept within the guidelines of which the briefs states. If the contract of the brief is broken, this could lead to legal issues.