Orange, not MS, is SPV smartphone app-breaker in chief. Just sign here... [The Register]

This is an important developing story.  Microsoft smartphones contain a feature that prohibits the user from running any software that's not specifically allowed by the carrier.  (Phones that run Java-based software have suffered similar restrictions in the past -- this is not a Microsoft problem, it's a carrier problem.)  So the person who paid a ton of money for a brand-new smartphone discovers that he can't run his favorite program because his carrier won't let him. 

This is a form of Digital Rights Management, but it's for code rather than data.  As with traditional applications for DRM, the only practical way to defeat it in the long run is for customers to reject it in the marketplace.  If some giant corporation is limiting what you can do with the hardware you paid good money for, don't be their customer anymore.  Just say no.

The Register's story concludes with an awesome quote from anti-DRM advocate and Linux kernel hacker Alan Cox: "if you can't decide what runs on the hardware you bought, then you don't own it really - whoever decides does."

10:57:50 PM   

Patent holders on the ropes. Advocates of royalty-free policies in standards are slowly but surely turning the tide against intellectual property owners. [CNET News.com]

It feels great to read anti-IP coverage in a major news outlet.  Just three years ago, every major-outlet news story with the word "patent" in it contained an implicit assumption that patents are desirable and good, and that patents and innovation go hand-in-hand.  That's starting to change.

Rambus' very public abuse of the patent system brought the problem of patents in high-tech to the attention of many.  The W3C's Patent Policy Board's deliberation was open to public feedback, and was covered extensively in the media.  (Okay, "extensively" may be too strong, but everything's relative.)

News editors are beginning to understand that there are two sides to the patent story.  That patents can be used anti-competitively, and that in the software and high-tech industries (with their reliance on standardization to build viable markets), patents often hurt more than they help.  The more balanced coverage of patent issues there is, the better off we are.

9:27:52 PM