(Note: we have not formally started this project yet, although several volunteers have expressed interest and already forward us news items.)
Media coverage of copyright issues too often uses vocabulary and assumptions taken straight from publishing and recording industry propaganda (for just one example, see "Digital Pirates Winning Battle With Studios" in the February 4th, 2009 New York Times). This unfortunately reinforces received ideas about copyright in the public's mind, even if only unconsciously. One reason people often conflate the unrelated phenomena of copying and plagiarism is that the two are so often linked together in news articles. The same is true of the association between copyright and the economics of creativity, which is taken to be much tighter than it actually is largely because so many articles about one raise the other without ever questioning the association at a factual level.
The Media Watch Project would be a mostly volunteer project in which we provide infrastructure to assist people in spotting such instances, in reporting them to us (for monitoring), and in encouraging the journalistic outlet in question to use neutral terminology, for example by saying "illegal copying" or "unauthorized copying" instead of "theft", "piracy", etc. By providing some simple online infrastructure — an email address to CC or BCC, a template form for producing letters, and a tracking database — we can greatly lower the overhead involved in letting journalists know that publishing industry propaganda need not be used uncritically, and simultaneously build a network of volunteers who become more aware of this issue and more inclined to do something about it in everyday interactions like forum posts or blog comments.
We would gauge the effectiveness of this project by watching a sample of media outlets over time and seeing how their language and assumptions change.
Outputs: