Media Watch is watching the Media. But we are monitoring Media Watch.
On October 10th, I wrote this blog post:

Facebook: A question

Am I being paranoid or is there a hint here that this information and personal fotos were lifted directly from Facebook, without the express action/permission of the family involved?? Is this album available to people who are not in the Australia network? Or not on Facebook?

It’s about David Pearce, the chap that died in Afganistan. I raised the concern that his photos had been ripped from Facebook without permission. There were 15 comments on that post. Some of the best came from Stilgherrian who worked his way through the Terms of Use and the Terms of Service to bring enlightenment to us all. Believe me, it seems obvious now, but not something that many people are thinking a lot about.

So I was a bit surprised last night when JodieM said that Mediawatch had done a piece on that very point called:

Filleting Facebook

For a start Facebook’s terms of use mean it owns all the material on Facebook pages. Those terms prohibit someone taking the material for commercial use. That’s called copyright law.

Then there’s the issue of privacy.

You can set your Facebook pages to limit who sees them, but many people don’t bother.

The Canberra Times which used trooper Pearce’s Facebook photos also recently published this…

Here’s an old post of mine on Mediawatch Quis custodiet custodes and another one where I was a tad critical of MediaWatch Forums. Do you think they were being snaky in not giving a hat tip? Do you think they genuinely came up with exactly the same approach that we (me, blogger, you commenters) came up with? It’s all a coincidence, right?

How cool would it be if the evening news and others started a hat tip bubble on items? Or is that overkill? I’d enjoy it. It would be funny to see JJProjects or DNWallace or Fang or FunkyCoda or DelicateGenius appear in the tickertape at the bottom. Even better if it said SilkCharm. (That’s spelt: Capital S, capital C please).