Public Knowledge has a section devoted to patent reform. One item on their list that I wanted to comment upon that I quickly scanned or read the other day:

“Raising the standard from determination of obviousness from the person having “ordinary skill” in the art to a person having “recognized skill” in the art.

Who defines “recognized skill”? One thing I’ve learned over the years is that those who recognize “pat each other on the back” and either express disdain for, or quietly dismiss, those not in their “inner circle” however they define that phrase.

I once went to a Patent Attorney many years ago, with an ugly but functional device I’d built by hand out of PVC pipe, a dish-washing device, and he tried to convince me that no one in their right mind would buy that, that consumers want something pretty, then he spent the rest of our appointment time trying to convince me to become a petition “signature gatherer”, that’s where the money was he said, and then charged me about $250 for his time of less than 20 minutes! Another time, I went to an invention submission corporation with drawings for a specialized front bicycle wheel, that another guy appeared to study carefully. While this time there was no charge, he spent some time discussing this and some other drawings I showed him which he didn’t look at closely. While we talked, he found out I didn’t have any substantial money to spend, and then said that I should contact a bicycle company (corporation).

20-years later when doing an Internet search, I recall finding that a professor at a University had recently designed and built such a front bicycle wheel as that in my drawings.

The American revolution was fought to get rid of corporations from our lives. They didn’t precisely teach us that in compulsory education, though the educators danced around that precise point skillfully. They almost connected the dot for all of us.

It seems to me that with the explosion of the Internet, and the sharing of knowledge that now seems in the public domain, patent attorneys are probably chomping at the bit to privatize the commons of the Internet and specifically the ideas that have been freely shared.

Even Facebook was recently in the news regarding privatizing their members communal work, a policy they reportedly temporarily reversed, after a huge outcry from their members.

So the pressure to privatize others’ work is certainly there. Hopefully, Public Knowledge will change their position on at least that one item, or perhaps I simply don’t understand the strategy behind it. I did read it very quickly and probably missed important things, and it seemed like a good time for a rant.

Perhaps patents, and the protection of devices, shouldn’t be allowed at all. If there can’t be a level and equal playing field for everyone, including insuring everyone has the money that is required to be spent to acquire a patent and its implication for the masses of human beings who cannot possibly afford (hint hint) to play that game today, then why should there be any patents? Has the primary purpose behind “Limited Time”, espoused in the U.S. Constitution, now been crossed out by Orwell’s Pigs to mean something else: continually privatize the profits, and keep socializing the losses (some are more equal than others)?

According to Wikipedia, the first capacitor was invented in 1745. After its patent presumably expired, and with respect to a society that claims to want to advance knowledge and scientific understanding, shouldn’t our current compulsory schools be teaching this now common or public knowledge of what capacitors are, how they work, what they’re used for, and how to mathematically calculate what sizes are needed in particular applications? It is a ubiquitous device these days. Wouldn’t the same go for electric motors, again according to Wikipedia first invented in 1828 or thereabouts? Don’t some electric motors often accompany capacitors? When I went to public and private schools during the compulsory years, motor-winding class was never offered, even though that’s a skill I could have used many times! Instead, I’ve had to purchase (consumer) new motors when their windings did burn out, or do without.

So it seems the purpose of allowing a patent for a limited time so an inventor could profit from it, has now somehow transformed into a perpetual obscuring to the masses of knowledge gained over past years of scientific advancement, while simultaneously saying we must go to school.

Later in our adult lives our advertising supported media skillfully encourages all of us, regardless of our educational or income level, to buy, buy, and keep buying: so much so that in the last few decades we’re increasingly asked to pay for cable to watch advertising on TV, or buy the new converter box so we can keep watching the ads fed to us, or buy a magazine filled with ads.

What does any of this do for those of us who need money to eat? The last time I was in a grocery store, they still charged money for food. Recognition doesn’t bring money with it, I’m sorry to report. Just look at the homeless. They’ve been recognized at least since the 1980s. They’ve been on TV news. They’ve been studied by scientists. They have advocates working on their behalf. They’re celebrities who are eating out of trashcans because that’s all they can afford!

Think they’re planning on getting a patent anytime soon?

I’ll let you guess where this came from:

“To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries

When one realizes the U.S. constitutional authors didn’t intend “Authors” or “Inventors” to be corporations, the extensive undermining of our society and government created by the granting of corporate personhood, allegedly done not by a judge but instead a court clerk, becomes a lot clearer.

Are these deceptive games solely so a very few (corporations only and the wealthiest of the already wealthy who own most of the largest corporations) can profit and keep profiting until the end of Time itself? Is that how “limited Times” is currently being interpreted by some? If not, then where’s the progress to the masses within a society that continually keeps making all of us pay to keep socializing the losses of a few corporations? Is the sole purpose of the masses to be consumers and underpaid (hint hint) employees in an employment system most like the Feudal Era of Lords and serfs?

If you don’t have any money, you’re only worthy of eating out of a trashcan, or counseling that you need more education and a job so a few elitists at the top of the money pyramid can profit, and after getting that job you can barely pay your bills, never mind having enough disposable income from that job to have a professional file a patent on your behalf and defend it if need be?

Where’s the so-called “Progress”?

According to the the Wall Street Journal, referenced in the freepress.net e-newsletter regarding grants for high speed internet services, telecom carriers will be getting government grants to expand Internet access into underserved and underdeveloped areas:

“The Commerce Department’s Internet buildout grants carry several conditions, including a contentious requirement that Internet networks built with the government grants be open to all devices like cell phones and laptops, regardless of the manufacturer or provider.

CTIA, an association of wireless companies, sent a letter to committee leaders Wednesday asking that the “vague, undefined, and unnecessary ‘open access’ obligation” be removed. CTIA said carriers will be reluctant to apply for the grants if they are uncertain of their open access obligations.

Rep. Anna Eshoo (D., Calif.), an ardent proponent of an open Internet principle called “net neutrality,” brushed aside the carriers’ concerns. “These are public dollars. Networks built with this funding should be open,” Ms. Eshoo said.

While the above grants are said only for underserved areas, one has to wonder if areas already served by a few big providers couldn’t use a little more competition.

We know the huge telecom ISPs don’t seem to care nearly as much about service as profit. Today’s example is from an article titled Cox . . .  BitTorrent Users with More Slowdowns:

“In February, Cox will trial a brand new throttling scheme that aims to slow down so-called “non-time sensitive” traffic when the network is congested. This includes all P2P, FTP and Usenet traffic. Although Cox announced the trials – which will start in Kansas and Arkansas – on its website, details are scarce.
. . . 
Ben Scott, policy director of Free Press, is also concerned with Cox’s new plans. He said in a response to the news, “The lesson we learned from the Comcast case is that we must be skeptical of any practice that comes between users and the Internet.” Indeed, network neutrality is at stake – again.

While I don’t generally use bittorrent, I do use FTP quite a bit when working on the websites, and I used to love Usenet, particularly the astrology channels, some 15 years or so back. Unfortunately, the astrology Usenet groups seemed to get taken over by activity which, for me at least, was distracting, though I know I’ve read recently that some still love Usenet, and if true, why should they be “slowed down”?

On the momentary topic of “slow downs”, recently I did some maintenance work for an old friend that required room & board (to keep commuting costs down) for a few weeks. This was in a BIG Southern California city, one with well-developed broadband markets! I took my laptop, as the residence had cable-delivered Internet and a router. Wow, what a slow down it was that occurred in the evenings, slow downs on webpage requests, and this was so-called premium Internet service! Very irritating. I was able to fix the issue on my computer by wiring around some of their systems, but how many of their customers just figure that’s the way it is and nothing can be done about it? Much better if people watch TV in the evenings is possibly the big-company “incentive” of intertwined interests we’re talking about here.

Could local public school districts provide Internet service to their surrounding communities at a competitive cost to that of the current broadband ISPs with sufficient incentives provided by the Federal government to do so? It seems the path of local school as ISP has been done in the past (link dated 1999) with dial-up Internet service:

“Although the Williamsville Community Unit School District already received Internet access courtesy of the state, reselling this access was not an option, explains Marty Benner, a board member in the district. Instead, the district installed a leased satellite system to acquire additional Internet access that could be resold. After an initial investment of $33,000, the district began selling the Internet access to the community last April. “That’s really why we did it,” Benner says. “It was not meant as a money-maker, but rather as a service to the community.”

As long as our government continues to grant corporate welfare to the largest telecom providers (privatize profits and socialize risks), it seems the likely answer is that local schools could not offer the service competitively. Can public schools receive federal government grants so they can be just as competitive in the ISP arena? If so, this might be something that schools could do to help fund their goals of educating the local community’s children, without needing to take more money from those of us without children, instead we could choose to purchase Internet access from the them.

I’d bet a lot of folks would LOVE to get high-speed broadband from the local schools, but it would have to be competitive price wise with current cable and DSL providers in order for this model to be successful. You can bet the corporatist would fight this one: ahem, only going for “underserved” areas, such as that reported by the WSJ’s article linked above. The more corporate welfare telecoms can get, the less competitive local ISPs, such as schools, could be.

Can you imagine the economic stimulus for local communities if tax monies taken by the federal government were given back to local communities as services for the commons?

It is undoubtedly true that the schools of the future will be much different from the recent past and presumably current model of Absolute Authoritarianism or Prussian methods.

Is this white paper a glance at the future of the new schools of the 21st century?

“As important as it is for physical structures to be adaptable, “it is even more important that class time be elastic. Instead of assigning a certain amount of time for teaching one subject per day, teachers need the flexibility of bigger and more adjustable time slots to truly impact learning,” said Charles Fadel, global lead for education for Cisco Systems. “There must be a renewed focus on increasing the quality of teaching by [giving] teachers more time and opportunities to plan, collaborate, and work with advanced technology systems.”

Local public schools as broadband ISPs, perhaps wireless to the local surrounding community, could be an incremental step in that direction, though it would have to be applied not only to undeveloped and underserved areas, but also to already developed broadband markets.

What better way to learn computers is there than to have students help maintain the technology infrastructure alongside true computer engineers and professional teachers?

This morning I noted a news item from Human Resource Executive Online, the article is titled: National Health Reform Begins. In short, the Obama Administration will begin very soon (if it hasn’t already by the time I press the publish button), and rising health care costs, as well as lack of health care for many, are on everyone’s mind. A paragraph “jumped off the page” while reading the article:

. . . along with the question of whether or not employers should be required to “play or pay” — that is, employers must either provide a certain level of health insurance or pay the government so that it can provide insurance-premium subsidies for low-income households. Two recent reports from the Congressional Budget Office are “must read” material for employers that want to understand what might happen, why it might happen and how it might affect their health programs.

This is a serious issue, with repercussions to last many generations into the future.

It seems common knowledge that health care in the United States is more expensive than in any other country, and it’s failing to provide the best health care (a point subject to debate) and universal coverage for everyone. Don’t believe it? An older health-care cost report from from the University of Maine circa 2001 (*.doc). When reading this, remember the inflation that has occurred over the last 8 years. Another health care report from the Common Wealth Fund, circa 2006, says:

Equity: Nine measures from the two surveys gauged the extent to which patients’ income affected their ability to access care. The U.S. scored last on seven of the nine measures of low-income patients not receiving needed care and had the greatest disparities in terms of access to care between those with below-average and above-average incomes. With low rankings on all measures, the U.S. ranked last among the six countries in terms of equity in the health care system. The U.K. ranked first, with no or negligible differences in terms of patients’ access to care by income. The U.S. is the only country surveyed with large numbers of uninsured, and this contributed to its low rating for equity in the health care system. But even among above-average income respondents, the U.S. lagged considerably behind their counterparts in other countries.

Not to make too fine a point regarding my own bias, Representative John Conyers authored H.R. 676. It has now attracted 78 cosponsors.

While I haven’t read the two Congressional Budget Office reports linked in the Human Resource Executive Online news item, I fortunately see that Medicare For All (see the PDF, page 13) is mentioned:

Provide individuals with coverage under, or access to, existing insurance plans such as the Medicare program, either as an additional option or under a “Medicare-for-all” single-payer arrangement.

More information about HR 676 can be found here, should you choose to and are able to help. From their front page:

• Every resident of the US will be covered from birth to death.
• No more pre-existing conditions to be excluded from coverage.
• No more expensive deductibles or co-pays.
• All prescription medications will be covered.
• All dental and eye care will be included.
• Mental health and substance abuse care will be fully covered.(1)
• Long term and nursing home services will be included.
• You will always choose your own doctors and hospitals.
• Costs of coverage will be assessed on a sliding scale basis.
• Tremendously simplified system of medical administration
• Total portability – your coverage not tied to any job or location.
• Existing Medicare benefits for those over 65 will remain the same or be vastly improved in many cases.
• No corporate bureaucrat will ever come between you and your Doctor to deny your care

While the Obama Administration and Congress struggle with the many problems currently facing our nation and the world, few can argue that health care is not one of the higher priorities to average folks, along with putting food on the table and keeping their homes if they’re lucky enough to have one. A Single-Payer Medicare for All (universal) plan would take some financial stress off small and large businesses alike, while improving health care access for all, including homeless folks.

It’s important for citizens to understand these issues facing us, think about them, then communicate with others, your neighbors certainly, and particularly your Representatives and Senators, as well as President Obama, regarding what you’d like to see happen in the future in regards to the health care proposals being discussed. You can bet the insurance corporations’ executives are doing so, but their past systems have failed some of us, while enriching themselves and their shareholders, creating the most expensive health-care system in the world that fails to cover all of us.

It’s time for us to take back our power as citizens and create a brighter, more equitable, and healthier future.

According to a Washington Post news item of May 4, 2007, it appears that President Bush’s Justice Department is writing legislation to immunize the phone companies from lawsuits stemming from post-9/11 surveillance.

‘The proposal states that “no action shall lie . . . in any court, and no penalty . . . shall be imposed . . . against any person” for giving the government information, including customer records, in connection with alleged intelligence activity the attorney general certifies “is, was, would be or would have been” intended to protect the United States from terrorist attack. The measure, which has not yet been filed, is contained in a proposed amendment to the fiscal 2008 intelligence authorization bill.’ read the full story…

Surely this must be another form of Corporate Welfare. If phone companies broke the law, and cooperated with a portion of the government illegally, then shouldn’t they be held both financially and criminally liable? The Executive Branch doesn’t play legislative interference when a person has shoplifted by declaring there should be no penalty for having done so; by similar logic, why should telephone corporations be granted special legal exemption from laws they were supposed to follow?

On January 17, 2007, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales wrote a letter stating that, in the future, all intelligence gathering of targeted communications will be conducted under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (PDF link via Wikipedia). Unfortunately, the story detailed by the Washington Post news item referenced above, if true, shows that the Executive Branch wishes to excuse the past illegalities of its co-conspirators.

Why is it constitutional for the Justice Department, which is under the Executive Branch, to write legislation, when Article 1 of the Constitution grants legislative authority to the Legislative Branch, otherwise known as Congress?

It appears that phone companies that may have illegally complied with past Executive Branch requests for intelligence on phone conversations have left the companies with a rather large legal liability. In turn, the Executive Branch appears to be attempting to mitigate these liabilities by legislating retroactively. If it was illegal then, then why declare that no penalties or punishments can be assigned for those acts?

This appears to me to be ultimately all about money, and the ability of certain wealthy entities to be above law in effect at the time. In order to achieve this the Executive Branch simply attempts to change the law for the benefit of very few. Shouldn’t there be a penalty for breaking the law?

As usual, citizens lose when the government doesn’t advocate for them, but instead for a few wealthy entities that have interests that oppose the Constitution and the law. Congress needs to severely limit the power of the Executive Branch to legislate.

A good first step would be to impeach the current occupants of the White House.

Once upon a time, I bought and sold stock. During that time I used what is typically referred to as technical analysis and charting. I have a shelf of approximately 35 books about the subject, all of them read at least once, some of them studied closely.

During the time that I traded, which I no longer do, it became apparent to me that volume, one technical measure of how many shares changed hands in the given time period, seemed artificially inflated at times. It was nothing in my view that could be proven using only pure technical analysis, but it was more of a gut feeling based upon studies of price and volume movement contrasted against how it moved historically.

Options? Today we learn:

“One of the nation’s highest-paid executives has left his job after becoming ensnared in a stock options scandal that already has forced dozens of companies across the country to wipe out billions in combined profits.” read more…

I’m continually amazed by the apparent corruption that seems to exist in business and at the top of many hierarchical pyramids that exist all around us, whether it is legal or not. While I’m not privy to any information about this particular scandal beyond what I read in the news, the following phrase caught my attention, “… has forced dozens of companies across the country to wipe out billions in combined profits.” Does this mean that those employees, companies, and investors who owned stock in the unnamed companies were lied to before the “profits” were wiped out?

From the same article:

“The company’s review didn’t reach any conclusion about whether there was intentional wrongdoing….”

Why does our society teach most of us little citizens to be honest, and punishes us severely when we’re not, often with zero tolerance, but that people at the top of hierarchy seem to get minor punishments, if any, when they’re either dishonest or seem to be? If it’s true that only the dishonest rise to the top, then why as a society do we teach our children to be honest and punish them when they’re not? (I’m not personally convinced that ‘only’ the dishonest rise to the top, it just often seems that way). Perhaps the question that should be asked is why do any of the dishonest ever rise to the top?

It’s curious that those with so much income seem to so easily escape the severe punishment so commonly prescribed for the rest of us. Why is stealing a candy bar such a heinous offense that it requires jail time, or at the very least a court appearance; but if you’re a CEO and take millions with the stroke of a pen are you allowed to resign if discovered, maybe pay back a small portion of it, perhaps continue to collect an astronomical retirement, indeed, simply have your act deemed “an error”.

We have a serious inequity of justice in the United States and we also appear to have a serious inequity of income distribution, both appear deep and entrenched, and lately these two groups seem to intersect in the title of CEO.

There’s an old saying, “Those with the gold make the rules.”

Why isn’t that rule enshrined in the text of the Declaration of Independence, and observed within the governmental structure delineated by the U.S. Constitution? Perhaps because it isn’t supposed to be that way?

Reality is hard to dismiss, even with a dreamy statement of principals that contradicts it.

The following website has a slideshow that offers a reasonably good explanation of how the stock market and its clearing mechanisms works, with several case studies, as well as some commentary about the SEC placed in historical context. Rather than trying to synopsize it further, it’s offered for your perusal. The show lasts for about 80 minutes, so be prepared to spend at least that much time listening and watching. As a slideshow, it’s not presented primarily as text, so it’s hard if not impossible to speed it up, making my favorite method of reading fast impossible.

The information presented is worth the time spent watching and listening, even if you have little interest in the stock market. Darkside of the Looking Glass may dispel some myths.

The hypocrisy of the Executive Branch and their legislative cohorts is stunning. They want secrecy and privacy for their actions, but are unwilling to grant privacy to others. They seem to want citizens to have the perception of privacy, without the reality of privacy. They seem to want corporations to collect extra customer cash from the value added by customer-perceived privacy, but they want corporations to give them free customer data. They seem to want the private sector to be somewhat more transparent, more like the public sector, but with funding by the so-called choice of consumers instead of by the mandate of taxpayer funding; while simultaneously seeming to want government to be less transparent, more like the private sector, more secretive, and to maintain the mandate of taxes to pay for it.

A curious pattern of common hypocrisy emerges: Beside the collection of money, corporations and government both seem to want loyalty from the worker, customer, taxpayer, and citizen; but both seem unwilling to be likewise loyal to the citizen. (more…)

AT&T is in the news, this time they are alleged to have updated their privacy policy to include language that grants them ownership over customers’ data according to an article by David Lazarus of the San Franscisco Chronicle. Yesterday, the Associated Press wrote about how police agencies across the country have been using private data brokers to bypass privacy laws that prevent the police from legally obtaining that information without a warrant.

It seems that our 4th Amendment guarantee to be safe in “persons … papers, and effects” has been shredded (more…)

On Monday, while testifying at a congressional hearing investigating the Executive Branch’s authorization of without-a-warrant wiretapping of U.S. citizens, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales said, “I gave in my opening statement, Senator, examples that President Washington, President Lincoln, President Wilson, President Roosevelt have all, uh, authorized electronic wiretapping.”

I watched this on CSPAN, live, as the statement was made, and was truly surprised there was no audible laughter emanating from the television’s speakers. Immediately after hearing the statement I burst out laughing, it was the best joke I’d heard all year.

What makes Gonzales’s statement so ridiculous is that the electric telegraph was patented in the U.S. in 1837, this was shortly after electromagnetism was discovered by scientists in the 1820s or thereabouts. Since George Washington was the first U.S. president, holding office from the years 1789-1797, it seems impossible that “electronic wiretapping” could have been performed during his presidency.

Many of us have heard or read of the story about Ben Franklin flying the kite in a lighting storm which lit up a key when the kite was struck by a bolt of lightning, and which, as the tale goes, marked the discovery of electricity. That reportedly happened in the mid 1700s sometime, according to Wikipedia, if in fact it is a true story. Static electricity was known of much earlier, but I digress.

If you haven’t seen or heard Gonzales’s statement, one video clip can be downloaded at Intoxination, via Crooks and Liars.

In a (mostly) unrelated bit of trivia, Western Union recently sent its last telegram, and this was said to have completed the company’s transition from communications to financial services. Here are some fair use snippets from the article, the emphasis on year dates was added by me:

“Effective January 27, 2006 … Western Union will discontinue all Telegram and Commercial Messaging services. We regret any inconvenience this may cause you, and we thank you for your loyal patronage.” … “The peak of Western Union’s telegram business was 1929, when the company and its army of uniformed messengers delivered 200 million telegrams worldwide — almost 550,000 a day.” … “Strictly speaking, the telegram — by definition, a message sent by telegraph — died a long time ago. In the mid-1960s, Western Union began sending its customers’ messages wirelessly using microwave radio beams instead of wires strung on poles.” “Western Union was first on many fronts: It built the first transcontinental telegraph line in 1861, it introduced the first stock ticker in 1866 and was one of the first 11 stocks tracked by the Dow Jones Average.”

I wrote above that this financial news item was mostly unrelated to this article’s main topic of warrentless wiretapping. However, the dates are curious:

• 1861 was the start of Lincoln’s Civil War, it was also in the mid-1800s that saw the beginning of Corporate Welfare.

“Charter revocation became less frequent, and government functions shifted from keeping a close watch on corporations to encouraging their growth. For example, between 1861 and 1871, railroads received nearly $100 million in financial aid, and 200 million acres of land.” (read more as PDF…)

• 1866 was during the American period known as Reconstruction.
• 1929 was the year President Hoover took office, the infamous stock market crash occurred which marked the end of the Roaring 20s, and about one month later, Hoover told Congress that (paraphrased) the economy was doing great and the American people had regained confidence in it.
• mid-1960s was a time of much technical innovation, one of which related to a precursor of today’s Internet, Darpanet if I remember correctly.
• 2006? What will the historians tell us in the future about now? We should know most of the possibilities by the end of the year. Perhaps the historically most significant event will be warrentless wiretapping, perhaps it will be something else more serious.

The connection in my mind between the two seemingly unrelated items is primarily due to the term Gonzales used in his testimony, “electronic wiretapping” and, paraphrasing, that the Executive Branch had done this broadly in various administrations. The news item about Western Union I’d noticed a few weeks ago relates to the telegraph, one of the first uses of ‘conductive wires’ for ‘electronic communication.’ Connecting the dots to a wider corporatist consipiracy seems tinfoilish, but is it all that hard to imagine when considering Abramoff, Cunningham, Enron, Worldcom, Arthur Anderson, et al? I guess corporate crime still pays.

EFF’s Class-Action Lawsuit Against AT&T for Collaboration with Illegal Domestic Spying Program

The investigation and turning of the wheels of justice down the road of wiretapping without-a-warrant or illegal domestic spying will require a firm grip on events to avoid slipping into hasty judgements that may be wrong turns if driven by a lack of meticulousness. If one views AG Gonzales’s statement, the one that seems so ridiculous on its face, as an admission to the public that our government has historically spied on its own citizens in spite of a 4th Amendment protection against unreasonable search and siezure, then it certainly explains why there was no laughter in the hearing room. In this case, Gonzales’s statement is definitely not ridiculous.

Twelve scholars wrote:

“Dear Members of Congress: We are scholars of constitutional law and former government officials. We write in our individual capacities as citizens concerned by the Bush Administration’s National Security Agency domestic spying program, as reported in the New York Times, and in particular to respond to the Justice Department’s December 22, 2005 letter to the majority and minority leaders of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees setting forth the administration’s defense of the program. Although the program’s secrecy prevents us from being privy to all of its details, the Justice Department’s defense of what it concedes was secret and warrantless electronic surveillance of persons within the United States fails to identify any plausible legal authority for such surveillance. Accordingly the program appears on its face to violate existing law.” (read more of the scholars’ legal reasoning…. Scroll to the bottom for their names, academic qualifications, and experience.)

It appears that the FISA law, passed by the Legislative Branch and signed by the President in 1978, was violated by the current Executive Branch.

Most all of us who have watched television cannot miss the flood of commercials that, we have often been told, help support the artists creating the entertainment as well as the corporate distribution network that brings the shows to us. It seems to me that the time granted to commercials on television versus the time granted to the show itself is a growing ratio—commercials are much more preponderant than they were 20- or even 5-years ago—and at the same time costs for viewers to purchase programming have increased far in excess of the rate of inflation for some number of years now.

If one has subscribed to a premium movie channel, the viewer will see fewer commercials, but this is not the only way to decrease commercial content. Technologies such as VCRs and Tivo have apparently turned the advertisers’ television model on its head, as viewers using these devices can skip through the commercial onslaught.

TV advertisers claim they aren’t getting the market saturation they feel they have paid for and claim they are entitled to, so they are increasingly demanding that screenwriters include more product placements within the body of the show itself. The Writer’s Guild of America claims the increasing frequency of this is unfair, perhaps even deceptive, and is fighting back. From an article authored by David Cohn (his weblog), and published by Wired News:

“While the WGA hasn’t filed a FCC petition, they have drawn up a list of demands. These demands include a full disclosure of all advertisers, strict limits on products placed in children’s programming and a collective voice for writers on how products can be incorporated into story lines.”

While I’m absolutely certain that the majority of writers are underpaid (I know well more than one novelist that claims this), and I fully support the rights of groups of people to gather together in peaceful dissent and to petition for higher wages, I have to ask, where is the concern for the average entertainment viewer?

Has the purchaser of cable TV or satellite programming simply been relegated to consumer status?

If one watches over-the-air broadcasts, or even subscribes to basic cable or satellite programming, but doesn’t routinely record shows using a VCR or Tivo for the purpose of commercial free television viewing, then increasing the amount of product placements written into the body of entertainment itself further increase the commercial onslaught that this subset of viewers watch.

If one is paying for a premium movie channel, for advertisement-free viewing, and advertisements are increasingly included in the script as product placements, then are premium-channel purchasers getting the same level of service they received in the past? If one buys DVDs to watch instead of subscribing to a premium movie channel, and advertisements are written into the movie script, then has the retail cost of DVDs gone down as a result of this advertiser subsidy?

If the Television Networks don’t watch out, they’ll find the insatiable greed of their advertisers causes even more people to turn off the TV, more than those who already have. If average television viewers are going to be watching only commercial content, both in the obvious commercial slots as well as the increasing amounts of advertisements within the body of the show itself, advertisements that are not obvious and have an intent other than telling the screenwriter’s story, then shouldn’t those viewers be paid to watch TV?