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...

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

As explained by Lee Gomes in "Web Radio Battles Efforts to Expand Royalties for Music" in the Wall Street Journal.

There are two separate copyrights for every piece of recorded music. Who knew? One for the musical composition (covering composers and songwriters), and one for the recording of a song (for record labels and musicians).

Usually the labels and musicians negotiate royalties, but the songwriters and composers have to make do with fixed payments, via a system mandated by Congress.

In the U.S. the labels and performers don't receive royalties for radio play, but songwriters do. This exemption has saved radio stations billions. "Every congressional district has a radio station, but only three of them have record labels," according to Chris Castle, a music lawyer.

Four federal inmates were indicted Tuesday on allegations that they copyrighted their names, then demanded millions of dollars from prison officials for using the names without authorization.

More details here.

The American legal community bears quite a bit of responsibility for this. For well over the last decade, they have encouraged and nutured a legal culture that rewards copyright abuse. Federal inmates take their cues from the world around them. Copyright law offered them a "get rich quick" extortion scheme. The sad part is that similar tales happen all of the time. But other people don't get indicted simply because they don't happen to direct their copyright extortion schemes towards federal prison officials.

I've said it before and I'll say it again - IP lawyers are the ambulance chasers of the 21st Century.

According to an article in The New York Times, James Bessen, a law lecturer at Boston University's law school (and a former software executive), claims that the cost of filing and defending patents outweighs their benefits.

It notes that he stops short of the call to abolish patents by Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine.

Count him in the reformist camp with Adam Jaffe, Josh Lerner, and the general counsel of Intel.

Lawrence Lessig has a nice op-ed in the Washington Post today (link here) on what you might be tempted to call corporate piracy: they are allowing Eyespot, an internet site that provides technology for video remixing, to make clips from the Star Wars movies available to its users for their remix projects. The catch? Under the provisions of copyright law relating to derivative works, Lucasfilms will own any remixes that incorporate their clips, and any additional material or images that the remix includes. Lucasfilms will, of course, be entitled to use these without compensating the remix artist. Lessig's characterization of this as digital sharecropping seems apt.

Pirate Bay, the well known site that allows you to exchange music, movies, games, and software regardless of copyright, has now opened a new service, BayImg, allowing you to upload images under Swedish law with similar freedom from copyright law and censorship link here. It has also announced it will be hosting videos which will offer a real challenge to YouTube. It will be interesting to see how many users respond and how much competition this offers since YouTube has adopted a policy of working with copyright holders to take down such material when requested.

There is a story up on the NYT web (link here) about a new IP controversy in which a sports blogger, Brian Bennett working for the Courier Journal of Louisville, KY, was ejected from the press box of the Louisville vs. Oklahoma State baseball game for discussing game action during the game in his live blog.

The NCAA contends that their television and radio contracts prohibit any alternative live communication of game action during a game, and that they were therefore justified in ejecting Bennett. The Courier Journal maintains that they were within their First Amendment rights in reporting on the news of the game.

While the litigation over this will likely be complicated, I would hazard an opinion that under existing copyright law, this will likely be judged fair use, based on what the lawyers call a "negative harm, implied consent" situation. Blog accounts of a game are not even close substitutes for the televised view of the action, or even running radio accounts, since the blogger has to slowly (relative to game action) type up his account of what is happening. On the other hand, a blog account that indicates a game is getting exciting has the potential to motivate otherwise uninterested parties to turn on their TV or radio and join the game. This is equivalent to a rave book review, which, in turn, is the basis of the "negative harm, implied consent" fair use doctrine.

Of course, fair use does depend on the circumstances. If this were a cricket game, blogging it might well be a contract violation.

In any case, this is one to watch, so stay tuned.