Topics Covered

This lesson explores the four topics of "Ethical Use of Media and Technology": copyright, plagiarism and content ownership; privacy and surveillance; media literacy and credible sources; and digital citizenship and responsible sharing, the rights and responsibilities of everyone who creates or consumes media.

Every post, share, quotation and download involves an ethical choice. Copyright protects original creative work, usually automatically, while exceptions such as fair use or fair dealing and licences such as Creative Commons allow some reuse; plagiarism, passing off someone else's work as your own, is a different wrong from copyright infringement. Apps and platforms collect large amounts of personal data, raising questions of consent and surveillance that laws such as the EU's GDPR and India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act try to address. Media literacy means telling misinformation, disinformation and malinformation apart and checking sources with methods such as lateral reading and SIFT. Digital citizenship brings these together: think before sharing, ask for consent, credit creators and treat others with respect.

Topics Covered: Ethical Use of Media and Technology

This section asks two key questions: what are the ethical responsibilities of content creators and consumers? and how can we evaluate media critically? The four topics below give the knowledge needed to answer them.

1. Copyright, plagiarism and content ownership

• Copyright is the legal right that protects original creative work, such as writing, music, images, films and software. It protects the expression of an idea, not the idea itself. In most countries copyright applies automatically when a work is created, and it lasts a long time: in the European Union, the United Kingdom and the United States, generally for the author's life plus 70 years; in India, generally life plus 60 years for literary works.
• Exceptions: laws allow limited use of protected work for purposes such as criticism, review, research, teaching and news reporting, called fair use in the United States and fair dealing in countries such as the UK and India. The rules differ from country to country.
• Creative Commons licences let creators give permission in advance. All of them require attribution (BY), and some add conditions such as non-commercial use only (NC), share-alike (SA) or no derivatives (ND). Works in the public domain, whose copyright has expired or been given up, can be used freely.
• Plagiarism versus infringement: plagiarism means presenting someone else's words or ideas as your own; it is an ethical and academic wrong even if the work is in the public domain. Copyright infringement means using protected work without permission beyond the legal exceptions; it is a legal wrong even if you credit the creator. Copying a centuries-old poem without naming the poet is plagiarism but not infringement; uploading a whole popular song in your video with a credit line can be infringement but not plagiarism.
• Content ownership online: users usually keep the copyright in what they post, but platform terms of service typically give the platform a licence to use and display that content.

2. Privacy and surveillance

• Data collection: apps and websites collect what we share and much that we do not notice, such as location, contacts, browsing behaviour and device information. This data is used for targeted advertising and to train recommendation algorithms, and it can be shared with other companies or exposed in data breaches.
• Consent: we usually agree to data collection by accepting terms of service that few people read. A common saying warns that if a service is free, your data may be what is being sold.
• Law: the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which has applied since 2018, gives people rights such as seeing and deleting the data held about them; India passed its Digital Personal Data Protection Act in 2023.
• Surveillance means monitoring people's activities. Governments may justify it for security and companies for business, which creates a tension between safety and convenience on one side and privacy and freedom on the other.
• Protecting yourself: use strong passwords and two-step verification, review privacy settings, limit app permissions and location sharing, and think about who can see each post.

3. Media literacy: identifying credible sources

• Three kinds of harmful information: misinformation is false information shared without intent to harm; disinformation is false information created or shared deliberately to deceive; malinformation is genuine information shared to cause harm, such as leaking someone's private messages.
• Checking sources: ask who created the content, what expertise they have, what their purpose is, when it was published and what evidence supports it. Be cautious of emotional or sensational headlines.
• Lateral reading: instead of judging a website only by its own pages, open new tabs to see what other reliable sources say about the site and its claim.
• The SIFT method: Stop before reacting or sharing; Investigate the source; Find better coverage from trusted outlets; Trace claims, quotes and images back to their original context.
• Bias is not the same as falsehood: every source has a perspective; the task is to recognise it and compare sources.

4. Digital citizenship and responsible sharing

Good digital citizens know their rights and accept their responsibilities. Before sharing, ask: Is it true? Is it fair to the people involved? Do I have their consent? Have I credited the creator? Would I be happy for anyone to see it? Disagree respectfully, never join in cyberbullying, protect other people's personal information and report harmful content.

Bringing it together: a case

A student makes a video essay that uses a popular song as background music, a photo found through an image search, a quotation from a news article and a picture of a classmate. An ethical, legal version would use royalty-free or licensed music, choose a photo with a Creative Commons licence or in the public domain and credit it, keep the quotation short and cite it, and ask the classmate's permission before including their image.