The Breakfast Meeting: China Blocks Times\'s Sites, and Faulkner v. Allen

The Chinese government blocked access on Friday to both the Chinese-language and English-language Web sites of The New York Times after the newspaper published an account of the fortune accumulated by the family of the prime minister, Wen Jiabao, Keith Bradsher reported. In addition, the popular mini-blogging service in China, Sina Weibo, was blocking attempts to mention The Times or Mr. Wen. The article, which traced the large investment stakes of Mr. Wen's family members, including Mr. Wen's 90-year-old mother, runs counter to his public image as a humble leader from a poor family.

• Since Bloomberg published an article this summer about the wealth accumulated by Mr. Wen's expected successor as China's top leader, Vice President Xi Jinping, the news service has encountered a series of problems in mainland China, including the blocking of its Web site, which is in English, Mr. Bradsher wrote.
• The BBC quoted a spokesman for China's Foreign Ministry as desc ribing The Times article as a smear of China written with “ulterior motives.” The BBC article noted how some users of the Twitter-like Sina Weibo have tried to circumvent the censors by using homonyms and coded language:

“The Twist Your Waist Times says the best actor has $2.7bn of assets. I just wonder how will he spend it?” asked a Tencent Weibo user registered in the British West Indies territory of the Turks and Caicos Islands.
“Twist your waist” in Chinese characters sounds like New York when spoken, while “best actor” refers to Mr Wen, who critics say only pretends to be a people-first leader.

The presidential election is on track to be a $2 billion campaign, based on the latest financial disclosures from the Obama and Romney teams, Nicholas Confessore and Jo Craven McGinty report.

• The Hollywood Reporter writes that including what was collected Thursday night from a fund-raiser featuring Michel le Obama at the home of Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith, Hollywood has raised $13 million for President Obama in October alone.
• The casino mogul Sheldon Adelson and his wife donated $10 million this month to a “super PAC” supporting Mitt Romney, Nicholas Confessore reports.

Apple released its latest quarterly results - for the period ending Sept. 29 - and they largely met analysts' expectations, Nick Wingfield reported. The results showed how Apple's business has been shaped by mobile products; revenue from the iPhone rose 56 percent to $17.13 billion, representing nearly half of the company's total revenue. It sold 26.9 million iPhones, 58 percent more than a year earlier. The totals for the quarter were impressive - in line with a company with a market value of $570 billion: net income was $8.22 billion, up 24 percent; revenue was $35.97 billion. Revenue for the full fiscal year was $156.5 billion, Mr. Wingfield writes, exceeding that of Microsoft , Google and Facebook combined.

• The shadow cast by Apple is perhaps nowhere more clear than in the case of the streaming-music service Pandora, Ben Sisario writes. When Apple's product announcements on Tuesday did not include any mention of an Internet radio service, which would compete with Pandora, Pandora's stock rose more than 8 percent. On Thursday, however, Pandora's stock fell as much as 20 percent on a Bloomberg News report that Apple would be introducing such a service in 2013. (The stock rose to close the day down 11.7 percent for the day, gaining more in after-hours trading.)

“The past is not dead; it's not even past.” Just ask the estate of a famous writer. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the owners of the rights to the literary works of the late William Faulkner are suing over the use of that quote in Woody Allen's movie “Midnight in Paris” - spoken by Owen Wilson - as copyright infringement.

Noam C ohen edits and writes for the Media Decoder blog. Follow @noamcohen on Twitter.