Folks TPP, and in a European context, TTIP are very dangerous not only to open source software but to any public service and no satisfactory response has been forthcoming.
There are ways of circumventing it I guess or opposing it (maybe using ISPs in China, Russia or North Korea???). The issue really should be reversed - how muchy open source coding has found its way into closed source software? We do not know because proprietory coding is secret, and hence insecure. Perhaps a court could rule that all software should be available for inspection by independent experts. This possibility may be sufficient to shut TI etc up. But this seems to have been put together in total secrecy and undermines pretty nearly every 'freedom' people have fought for since at least King John and probably others (not that English peasants enjoyed too much freedom after 1215 as it was the barons who got it all!) I really do not understand why legislators have done this unless corruption has become so pervasive that there are no longer any good guys and girls around (well, maybe Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn excepted but their chance of power is pretty slim at the moment despite Iowa). In the UK we have a referendum on EU membership which under ordinary circumstances I would automatically support as very much a pro-Europe person. But if TTIP is implemented, I don't know which way to vote. Of course it is a total sham anyway, so maybe a bloody nose for the legislators would not be a bad idea. And looking at the way the EU has treated Greece, Cyprus, Ireland, Portugal, I don't hold out much hope for an epiphany. Anyway this is a bit OT. :) > > > On 2/4/2016 6:59 PM, David Winsemius wrote: >>> On Feb 4, 2016, at 3:15 PM, Rolf Turner <r.tur...@auckland.ac.nz> >>> wrote: >>> >>> >>> >>> Quite a while ago I went to talk (I think it may have been at an NZSA >>> conference) given by the great Ross Ihaka. I forget the details but my >>> vague recollection was that it involved a technique for automatic >>> choice of some sort of smoothing parameter involved in a graphical >>> display. >> Identifying discontinuities: >> >> https://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/~ihaka/downloads/Curves.pdf >> >> http://www.google.com/patents/US6704013 >> >> TI can now own analytic geometry if they file enough patents. > > And TI could therefore under TPP demand that any Internet Service > Provider remove any R content (or R generated content) that they claimed > (correctly or otherwise) infringed on their intellectual property, > without a court order, and with common citizens having only slightly > more ability to seek redress than the British peasants had when their > nobility got King John of England to sign the Magna Carta on 15 June 1215? > > > And, of course, this is only one concrete example. > > > More relevant, TPP might prohibit any government from promoting > the use of open-source software, because it could deprive a for-profit > company of income, and they could therefore sue for lost profit under > the Investor-State Dispute Settlement Settlement (ISDS) provisions of > the TPP or other "free trade" agreements like NAFTA. This is hardly far > fetched: Last Dec. 21, the U.S. Congress decided that consumers in the > U.S. did not have the right to know the origins of the meat they buy > under NAFTA (Scott Smith, "Congress repeals country of origin labeling > for meat", United Press International, Dec. 21, 2015 at 10:12 AM, > http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2015/12/21/Congress-repeals-country-of-origin-labeling-for-meat/3241450709277/). > > > > Spencer Graves > > ______________________________________________ > R-help@r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > PLEASE do read the posting guide > http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. > Best wishes John John Logsdon Quantex Research Ltd +44 161 445 4951/+44 7717758675 ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.