1. The fight over the R rating given to the Weinstein Co.’s Bully is intensifying, and as many rally around the film, it’s looking like it will be released without a rating. Getting slightly less attention, as any non-shirtlessness story tied to Matthew McConaughey will, is the NC-17 rating given to Killer Joe for violence and sexuality. Meanwhile, Lionsgate UK (ding!) trimmed seven seconds from The Hunger Games to drop the restricted age limit from 15 to 12.

2. Iran cancelled a planned celebration of Oscar-winning director Asghar Farhadi, with no indication why, but Farhadi still says he loves Iran and will never leave. Well, except maybe to make films, and he thought Paris looked like a good place for that. He might notice while he’s there how France has celebrated Oscar-winning actor Jean Dujardin.

3. The Guardian’s David Cox says Hollywood is courting older viewers now who don’t want special effects-laden blockbusters (ah, so that’s why John Carter bombed…or did it?). But theaters are still courting youth and their ever-present mobile phones, and Hollywood is offering any number of ways to watch movies on handheld devices, including wristwatches. (Somehow I don’t think a movie-viewing wristwatch is something I should get grandpa for his birthday this year.)

4. Wal-mart announced its “disc to digital” service for Ultraviolet, which could be make-or-break for UltraViolet, but Peter Kafka thinks it will be a tough sell given the various restrictions and inconveniences that come with it. But as a recent ruling against DVD-ripping technology Kaleidescape indicates, restrictions and inconveniences are the rule right now.

5. Nielsen stats say over half of US households have current gaming consoles in the home and gaming on mobile and tablet platforms is on the rise, and it looks like we’ll also have a new Xbox as an option by 2013. If we end up unhappy with our Xbox games, apparently we can sue the FTC over them, as gamers frustrated with the ending of Mass Effect 3 have done, though the game’s executive producer defends the ending and other perceived failings of the game.

6. More interesting stats courtesy of Nielsen: More women than men are blogging, and just over half of bloggers are parents with under-18 kids in the house. That might be related to why so many are impatient with slow-loading websites. But just imagine how tough it is to be a blogger in one of the Internet Enemies countries.

7. We’re not quite sure yet if tablets are hurting e-reader sales, and we’re not quite sure yet about how Kindle Singles are selling or how much money authors can make from them exactly, and we’re not quite sure yet if the Department of Justice has a case to make against publishers for colluding with Apple, and against Amazon, on e-books prices or even what e-books should cost. But we’re getting there.

8. A UK college student is being extradited to the US to face copyright infringement charges for hosting links to pirated media on his website. This is leading to a larger conversation in the UK over extradition laws, reaching all the way to the highest offices in each land.

9. Yahoo is suing Facebook over patents. Facebook says it’s disappointed and plans to fight back, though some expect Facebook to eventually settle or outright buy some of Yahoo’s patents.

10. Some of the finer News for TV Majors posts from the past few weeks: Luck Cancelled, Community Ratings, 2011 Ad Revenue Down, BBC Downloads, CW Shortens Delay, Return of The Killing, Amazon-Discovery Deal, Viacom Blog, Aereo Countersues, Netflix Branding, Mad Men & Weiner, Pay-As-You-Go Service, Teens Watching More, New UK Channel, Netflix & Apple, Ownership Rule Countered, Death of Cable.

In the U.S., Amazon has had a patent on this one-click purchasing system since the late 90s. It’s called “Method And System For Placing A Purchase Order Via A Communications Network”. It’s a special class of patent known as a “business method patent”, since it covers a particular way of doing business. Most patents cover specific gadgets, like a new broom or a better mousetrap. Patent-holders get a 20-year right to prevent others from making a similar invention and profiting from it. Business method patents grant ownership over technologies and the ways those technologies are put to use.

Relatively rare before the 1990s, the U.S. patent office started handing out business method patents more regularly with the rise of computers and online retail services. There are now patents on methods of running online auctions, the use of electronic shopping carts and even the selling of audio and video downloads over the Internet. Since the mid-90s, applications for business method patents in the U.S. have skyrocketed from hundreds to tens of thousands per year.

Here where I am in Canada, we haven’t experienced the same surge, mostly because the wording of our Patent Act seemingly excludes business methods. But that may be changing. Amazon’s quest to patent the one-click system here is currently at the Federal Court of Appeal, after 13 years of rejections, appeals, and reversals.

Business method patents are troubling because they grant a monopoly not just over a particular technology but ultimately over ways of doing – over ways of interacting with technology. They allow patent holders to stake a claim in what is, in essence, human behaviour. (Apple, for example, has patents covering certain gestures for interacting with their touch-sensitive gizmos).

The absurdity of business method patents is highlighted by Amazon’s use of their 1-click patent in the U.S. In 1998, the company used their 1-click patent to sue rival Barnes & Noble, alleging the “Express Lane” feature on B&N’s website was infringement. B&N had to alter their site so that purchases involved two clicks instead of one. Amazon essentially argued that its patent on a specific use of web browser “cookie” technology also gave it control over an entire method of buying digital stuff.

Business method patents create a blanket of legal hurdles and licensing fees that smother inventors’ ability to innovate. For example, a recent study by James Bessen and Michael Meurer suggests there are upwards of 4,319 patents an entrepreneur could be violating just by selling merchandise online. This patent “thicket” makes developing new gadgets and software more expensive – costs that consumers experience in the form of higher prices.

As more e-commerce moves to mobile phones and other portable devices, these platforms will face a similar land run. In fact, a recent investigative report on This American Life and NPR (“When Patents Attack!) showed how business method and software patents are increasingly causing headaches for big and small tech companies alike. Companies without actual products (non-practicing entities in biz-speak) are amassing huge portfolios of patents and using them to attack actual developers and hardware makers, trying to force them to pay stifling licensing fees.

Companies like Lodsys (one of the shell companies This American Life affiliates with Intellectual Ventures). Earlier this summer, the company sent out infringement notices to half a dozen developers who make applications for Apple’s iPods and iPhones. These are small developers – makers of calculator apps and twitter clients – who allow users to buy upgrades to their programs from within the applications themselves. Lodsys, a company that doesn’t make any competing apps, claims it has a patent on in-app purchasing. They are demanding a licensing fee of 0.575% for all U.S. sales of the apps until their patent expires. While Google, RIM, or Apple have the legal and financial resources to deal with such demands, smaller developers often don’t.

So next time you click once to buy, ask yourself whether the process is so unique and novel that Amazon should have a 20-year monopoly to it. The basic properties of the Internet (e.g. many-to-many communication, hyperlinks, etc.) opened up new ways for users and companies to interact. These qualities are just as responsible for new ways of doing business as any specific business method. If patents are supposed to spur innovation by sharing discoveries while also protecting inventors’ ability to profit from their ideas, we need to ask whether they are meeting this goal, or whether they simply act as quiet quests for control over information and cultural practices.