Under the Obscene Publications Act it is illegal to release for public consumption any materials, such as newspapers, magazines, films, and TV programmes the content of which, when taken as a whole can be deemed obscene and could 'deprave and corrupt' a significant proportion of those likely to read, listen to or watch it.
Privacy law
Privacy law is a statutory law which protects everyone's right to their personal privacy despite their position in society,
Many recent examples of breach of the privacy law involve phone hacking.
examples:
Two Facebook users this recently filed a class action complaint against the social network, Ars Technica reports, alleging that the messaging system inside Facebook is not as private as it’s advertised to be, and that the company actively mines for data from personal messages and generates likes based on the content exchanged between users. Facebook described its messaging system as “unprecedented,” when it comes to privacy controls, but the filing alleges that the company is actually accessing data gathered from chats without the user consent.
The current gives the creators of any literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, sound, TV and/or film productions rights to control the ways in which their material can be used by others.
Case
Vanilla Ice, who had a hit in 1991 with the song 'Ice Ice Baby.' indicted on the grounds that parts their song contained parts of the song 'Under Pressure' by David Bowie and Queen without having been given permission for doing so. Though at first denying it, Vanilla Ice later retracted the statement saying it was “a joke”. Facing a lawsuit by the duo, Vanilla Ice confessed to 'sampling' the work.
Outcome
The case was settled privately out of court with Ice paying an undeclared sum of money and crediting Bowie/Queen on the track
Ethics definition moral principles that govern a person's behaviour or the conducting of an activity.
Law definition the system of rules which a particular country or community recognizes as regulating the actions of its members and which it may enforce by the imposition of penalties.
Essentially therefore, ethics are the underlying values and standards that are, or have been, set as the minimum expected of all individuals to meet.
However, if breached, the law stipulates the penalties that can/may be imposed.
Copyright & Intellectual property
