Legal and Ethical Obligations

Legal and Ethical Obligations

Legal

Copyright:

Copyright law is originated in the UK which from the concept of a common law it became statutory with the passing of the copyright act. The laws give the creators of arrangements of published editions rights to control the ways in which their material may be used on. The rights cover broadcast and the public performance, copying, adapting, issuing, renting and lending copies to the public. In the many cases of the creator will also have the right to be identified as the author and to object to distortions of his work. International conventions give protection in most countries subject to all the national laws. For example if you got an music album, game, food products you will need to name that type of product you have differently to theirs so it would not be classed as copyright.

Trademark:

Trademark is a sign for which identifies the products or services of a business that may consist of words like slogans, logos, shapes, numerals or any type of colours combination of these. It is basically is signed of origin that allows customers and other companies to distinguish the goods or services of the one trader from those of another. They are usually distinctive for the goods or services in relation to what it is and are never similar or identical to any other type of product in earlier marks by another company. Use of another traders trade mark may end up infringing some third party rights which could mean litigation rebranding or even withdrawal from the market.

Patent:

A patent is used to protect the new invention that covers on how things work out on what they do and how they do it also what they are mode of and how they are made. It also gives the owners the right to prevent all the other things from making by using it when being imported or selling the invention without permission. To get a patent on an invention, the invention must be brand new and not been done before by someone else which makes it unique and must be capable and feasible of being made or used in some kind of in the gaming industry.

Registered Design:

In the industrial design a right is an intellectual property right that protects the visual design of the objects that are not purely utilitarian. An industrial design consists of the creation and the shape like the configuration or composition of the pattern or colour or combination of the pattern and colour in the three dimensional forms that contains aesthetic value. If it does not apply for any of the registered design and the creation that you made may still receive limited protection through an unregistered design right or maybe copyright but however there are also some limitations to what may be protected if you can stop other people using your design if you can prove it that it was intentionally copied so the design right is difficult to enforce. You can also only protect the three dimensional shape with the two dimensional designs that may be protected by the copyright but this is more difficult to enforce than a registered design. The protection only lasts for a maximum of fifteen years and it is subject to a licence of right for the last five years. Also one of the aspects of the designs act is the distinction between the idea of a type of product and the design relating to that certain product. This is the designs act that will not grant a monopoly to a business that attempts to register a fundamental or essential form of a product.

Ethical 

Violence:

Violent video games are a debate often on topics like the game graphic violence, sex and sexism practically full nudity and portrayal of criminal behaviour. Video games have been studied for links to addiction and aggression and it can be agreed that engaging the video games does have many ethical concerns. Through violence there are many game involving violent acts as well as other content related to violence. A technology advances as the number of the people playing games and increases the range of number of different types of games that increases also. This opens up for more controversy in games. The biggest controversial point in gaming is the violence that is used in games for example like grand theft auto. Some people see violence in games morally wrong and feel like that there are too many children in the games industry playing violent games now and it includes all the amount of violence that games like grand theft auto do in their games.

Ratings:

This is a PEGI rating that shows an age rating system which was established to help people in European to make informed choices on which video games that they would want to purchases and see if the game is suitable for the age. PEGI is highly promoted within most video games a company including with all different types of console manufactures such as Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo.

Education:

Through all the education perspectives there are different things that gaming can teach us and some are positive while the others are negatives. Educational video games are considered a type of serious game as these games have a strong purpose than other pure entertainment. Some people call these types of games edutainment because they would combine the entertainment of that game and the education on what you could learn from it. An educational computer game can be defined as an electronic medium with all the characteristics of a gaming environment that have intended educational outcomes targeted at specific group of learners.

Stereotyping: 

The video games industry is mainly targeted towards men, opposed to women but some people see this as stereotyping as they see the females as a non-video gamer player whereas a large amount of the females in the gaming industry shows the population do play video games and finds it interesting and entertaining as much as men.

Addiction:

The addiction participating in a long amount of time in a video game has caused people to be addicted to it. As a result they lose a lot of valuable time within their communities and might be able to miss out on opportunities from other activities that could be more beneficial for them. This is one of the major concerns that a video game in the gaming industry is having, too many people are enjoying their games a lot but when the addiction comes, it’s hard to stop. Otherwise a lot of health claims comes along so the ideal game is something that’s fun and yet not that addicting.