George Walker

Legal and ethical issues of 1922

Legal issues

1922 is an adaptation of a Stephen King novel. This creates a potential issue as the
writer of the original content would have to be credited. If they were not credited they
would be in their rights to sue Netflix. Netflix did credit Stephen King a number of times,
to not run the risk of legal disagreement.

Another legal issue regarding the original creator of the content is how Netflix would
need to get a licence to access the rights of the book. This is because Stephen King
and the books publisher will have all the rights to that story and Netflix would not have
the rights to make the adaptation without the consent of Stephen King and his publisher.
You can argue that this is a copyright complication.

Ethical issues

An ethical issue that concerns this film and Netflix is the age rating of the content. Due
to the nature of the film it would be given a 15 or 18 age rating. But, as the film is
exclusive to Netflix there is no age rating. This makes the film very accessible to an
inappropriate age group. Netflix urge their users to set up a ‘Kids’ account if they have
young viewers, but the ‘kids’ account does not cater for age groups from around 9-14.
This makes these users vulnerable to exposure of inappropriate content.

Another ethical issue regarding the film is the use of children actors and animals in the
film. Throughout the film there is inclusion of a child actor who plays the son of the main
character, and is a very regular feature. It is a requirement that children can not work
over