The New York Times gets it just right in their editorial today (link here) on the Federal Communications Commission's "compromise" on open wireless rules for the public spectrum auctions coming up early next year, and the follow-on auctions of the analog television spectrum in 2009. Under the compromise, some portion of the spectrum being auctioned next year will have requirements that cell service providers operate open networks, without restrictions on which phones customers use and which software applications they run on their phones and over the open networks.

As the editorial notes, AT&T and Verizon fought this ruling tooth and claw.

The Tinseltown Identity: sixty per cent of movies (even with multiple platform distribution) and ninety per cent of TV series lose money.

So what's a studio to do?

Convert it to the Tinseltown Ultimatum:

Ditch the residual payment system .

Movie script writers are entitled only to their initial fee under copyright rules, which of course no one in Hollywood is proposing to touch.

Everything you need to know right here .

Fopp and Tower Records have closed within the last year.

The four major record labels are undertaking cost cutting measures to save their businesses. Are they just shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic?

This six-volume encyclopedia on pharma technology and regulation looks like it might be the last word on the subject, at least if having everything in one convenient place is the criterion. I haven't seen it and don't know if it covers the patent issue, but it looks worthwhile as a general reference. And at only $3,000 a set, you'll probably want two.

Click here

There are at least a dozen new unauthorized Harry Potter books in China. They are spurring interest in reading among kids, and providing lots of jobs in the printing industry, not to mention booksellers, according to the New York Times .

But not to worry, J.K. Rowling's lawyers are on the case. After all, she's only a billionaire and might have a problem upgrading her lifestyle if this problem continues.

If they can't do it, she might call out Solitary, Poor, Nasty, Brutish, and Short. I hear they are really mean.

Fortunately, the Chinese government is more libertarian in regard to the monopoly formerly known as intellectual property than are the governments of the U.K. and the U.S.

It seems that authorities with the U.S. border and custom enforcement have no problem issuing border passes to drug smugglers coming to the U.S.

But when it comes to cracking down on people playing unauthorized copies of video games, they are all over that serious transgression big time commando-style.

Certainly shows where the priorities of law enforcement are these days. Curiouser and curiouser...

In todays patent troll news Sony is being sued over the cell processor. The patent Sony is alleged to have infringed is here. Why is Parallel Processing a patent troll? Simple: Parallel Processing, or more precisely Rob Chang to whom the patent was issued, has contributed little or nothing of social value. Read the patent: does it help you build a parallel processor? No. The basic ideas underlying parallel processing have been known for decades; the devil is in the details - which types of decentralization of processing and memory work well under practical conditions and with particular hardware. The Sony Cell is the product of a few cheap ideas and a lot of expensive tinkering. There is no evidence Rob Chang or Parallel Processing contributed to this process. So they have no moral or economic claim on Sony. And since they lack moral claim and are trying to file a financial claim that makes them trolls.

The sad thing is - it wouldn't be that hard to improve the patent system to get rid of this type of claim. Just force patent holders to provide evidence of having contributed in a substantial way to product they are claiming belongs to them.

Microsoft struggled for years in China under the baggage of its IP-infused business model. This alienated its customer base and the government, and enabled Linux to expand its toehold. But in 1999 Gates & Co. decided to help China develop its software industry. Despite Gates' public pronouncements in the West that piracy was bad, and a 2001 McKinsey study advocating that China enforce its (so-called) rights, Microsoft decided to tolerate piracy. Gates now says this was the right decision.

"It's easier for our software to compete with Linux when there's piracy than when there's not," he states in "How Microsoft Conquered China" .

Unfortunately, Beijing started to think more like Microsoft does here. It now requires its pc makers to install legal software.

And there are other issues, such as Microsoft's position on China's record on individual rights.

"Facebook, one of the hottest social-networking sites on the Internet, landed in a Boston courthouse Wednesday facing charges that its founder stole the idea for the company from a competing site." --San Francisco Chronicle, today