Censorship and Ownership (another version available on request)

Censorship and ownership

Censorship is put in place to protect the public from certain topics, influences, language and images. Censorship is used by the government, media outlets and other controlling body, this protects all people of all ages and backgrounds for various reasons for example you wouldn’t see neo Nazi doing speeches about killing certain people and it being fine for television because this wouldn’t be appropriate and may start influencing audiences. There is other censorship is used, such as when someone doesn’t want their face to be seen it can be blurred or covered completely – this can protect this person, as they may be under witness protection etc.

Ownership is there to make sure people have the rights to what they create and therefore rightly own. For example photographers copyrighting their photos. Ownership is also used for other things other than matters within the media sector it can also be used for people or companies that have invented/designed objects.

Ownership can be a means of profit for example when owning a record that you have the legal rights to you get all the money for it for when it gets played on radio etc and the profits it makes.

But sometimes the right ownership is not just used for the profit side of matters, people or companies may just be interested in the recognition they receive for their product.

Censorship and ownership also has a legal and ethical side.

Censorship is used to cover up illegal matter within media, especially television for example you cannot view child pornography on any kind of media it is totally illegal and unethical and that is a law and censorship set by the government – this is a world wide censorship. This is obviously put in place to protect everyone, audiences don’t want to see or know of people seeing or hearing of such matters.

Ownership side of legal and ethical matters is there too stop other companies and people stealing or using their product for their own gain, use or profit. Those matters that are listed above is totally unethical and stealing is illegal. Companies such as Apple and Samsung have got into Ownership legal issues where Apple accused Samsung of stealing the idea of their software for their phones – Apple won and Samsung had to pay.

Also Censorship and Ownership can be contractual – so that in itself can be a legal issue to be dealt with. For instance when you have signed a contract to not to use inappropriate language and you do so, you’ll have has breeched the contract and put the company in legal difficulty and upset audiences. Such as with the Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand incident on BBC radio.

Vast growing technology is making it things easier and difficult with certain matters. Such as where there is more and more technology more of it is the same – so companies can accuse each other of stealing or replicating ideas. But things are easier because there are more varieties to censor programmers and shows with new software and technology – it is easier to protect the public and audiences. As its easier to research backgrounds on people so you know what you’re expecting and also there is more equipment to use to censor – for example automatic ‘beeps’ when cursing is used.

Concentration of media ownership

Is a process whereby progressively fewer individuals or organizations control increasing shares of the mass media Contemporary research demonstrates increasing levels of consolidation, with many media industries already highly concentrated and dominated by a very small number of firms.
Globally, large media conglomerates include Viacom, CBS Corporation, Time Warner.

And Tesco – I own some of that.

I think censorship and ownership is a extremely vital and important part of creative media sectors as it makes sure everything is fair, and people do not steal things and are credited for their own work.
it makes sure everything is its correct place and fair.


I don't really see any negatives with censorship and ownership as it protects people, I guess when people steal things before they have ownership over it, because when a situation like that occurs their works has been stolen and will be extremely difficult practically impossible to reclaim.