This week at the symposium, I realised I made the right choice in not becoming a lawyer. All this talk of copyrights and defamation and offensive content is more than enough law talk for me!
I found the idea ‘intent is not a defense’ really interesting though. It’s not something I had considered in terms of the work I produce, but it’s certainly something I agree with in everyday life. If you hurt someone, or offend someone, you can’t make that pain go away by explaining what you meant by it. I’m not sure where I heard this before, but there’s a saying (for lack of a better thing to call it), that goes ‘If you drop a plate, shattering it, but then apologise, will the pieces go back together?’. To me, essentially that means that you have to be careful what you do, or say. And these days, that applies tenfold to media content we produce.
Most of the content produced today ends up online, in some way or another. That gives it infinite life. Taking it off your own site, or destroying a hard copy won’t be enough anymore. If we use someone’s copyrighted material or post defamatory material, it can’t be immediately rectified and taken down. So as a student, I want to master working in that ‘grey area’ and knowing what I can and can’t post, without putting myself or any future employers at risk of being sued.
