6. Product Packaging
If you are producing videos for sale to the general public there are certain regulations you must abide by under the Trade Description laws. Essentially, any descriptions of goods you trade must be accurate and it’s a criminal offence if they’re not. This is particularly relevant to those producing Special Interest Videos (SIVs).
These laws apply to both the text and illustrations on your packaging and labelling. Among other things, you must not be misleading about the Content, Programme Duration, Fitness for Purpose and any Endorsements.
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6.1 Pricing
Under Consumer Protection law, it’s an offence to give consumers a misleading price indication about goods, services or facilities. The law applies to any way in which the indication of price is given, for example, in a written notice or verbally.
6.2 Classification Marks & Censorship
In 1984, Parliament passed the Video Recordings Act. This act stated that, subject to certain exemptions, video recordings offered for sale or hire commercially in the UK must be classified by an authority designated by the Secretary of State. In the UK, classification is carried out by the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC). Similar laws and bodies are in place in other countries.
In most cases, SIVs will be exempt from classification. Under the Video Recordings Act 1984, a video is an exempted work if it is designed to inform, educate or instruct; is concerned with sport, religion or music; or is a video game. However, if such a work depicts human sexual activity or gross violence to any significant extent it will need a BBFC classification.
However, many SIV producers apply an ‘E’ symbol (which follows a similar design to the official classification marks) to the packaging to signify that it is exempt. The E symbol is not an official symbol and does not have any legal standing. Nor is it a requirement that it should appear on videos, unlike the BBFC classification symbols. Under the Video Recordings Act, the onus is on the distributor to decide whether or not a video work is an exempted work, and distributors have tended to put an E symbol on video packaging as guidance to the public.