Siva sez, "I did a search of Lexis/Nexis among major US newspapers to find the frequency of stories containing 'copyright' and 'fair use.' 'Fair use' is a good proxy for stories that describe an actual conflict or lawsuit. Also, because few of the thousands of stories about p2p file sharing (Napster, Kazaa, Grokster, etc.) discussed fair use, I was able to get a picture of the frequency of stories that did relatively sophisticated stories on copyright battles."
1992: 19 1999: 16 1993: 32 2000: 93 1994: 33 2001: 92 1995: 28 2002: 80 1996: 44 2003: 82 1997: 34 2004: 57 1998: 66 2005: 113
"In 1998 the DMCA was in the papers, although the coverage was horrifying and shallow. In 2000 copyright issues broke out everywhere and more newspapers assigned the "copyright beat" to business or technology reporters in the wake of Napster. The following years echo that new sense of curiosity. In 2005, beats me. I have no idea why 2005 should be such a high year. Perhaps Google Library."
(Thanks, Siva!)
Update: David sez, "Several weeks ago I did something similar to get a rough measure of whether IP and commons based peer production have moved closer to the center of public consciousness. I searched for variations on 'open source software,' 'copyright,' 'patents,' and 'innovation' in the NYT, and in Wall Street Journal abstracts. At first glance it looks like there is a slight upward trend in IP-related terms, but not a very dramatic one. 'Open source software' is of course through the roof. I did these counts quickly, and a serious analysis would of course have to adjust for things like total number of articles published annually. You can take a look at the xls spreadsheet and a few Mickey Mouse regression graphs.
