How Perl and R Reveal the United States' Isolation In the TPP Negotiations

langelgjm writes "As /. reported, last Thursday Wikileaks released a draft text of the intellectual property chapter in the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement. Since then, many commentators have raised alarm about its contents. But what happens when you mix the leaked text together with Perl regular expressions and R's network analysis packages? You get some neat visualizations showing just how isolated the United States is in pushing for extreme copyright and patent laws."

Comments

In summary, what can we conclude from these data?

[DrPBacon]

"In summary, what can we conclude from these data? Canada, with by far the most sole-country proposals, seems like it is up to something." Those shifty Canadians. I knew it.

Go Canada

[g4sy]

Please let there be a lack of groupthink

Re:Go Canada

[Chrisq]

:Go Canada

I don't think it can. I looked at a map and its sort of suck between the USA and the arctic as far as North South moves go and between Greenland and Siberia East and West.

Re:Go Canada

[erikkemperman]

Well then, they'll just have to wait until the North Pole melts and/or the US implodes. Both have been predicted, eh?

Seriously though, is it possible (I can't be bothered to RTFA just now) that Canada is the only one in this group who actually thinks for itself? Or dares oppose the more outlandish US proposals? Profits trumping health sounds distinctly Uncanadian, for one thing.

Re:Go Canada

[somersault]

The US having the least correlation with other countries is a sign that there is either massive brainwashing/groupthink in the rest of the world as a whole, or in the US itself.. hmm :p

Re:Go Canada

[g4sy]

Seriously though, is it possible (I can't be bothered to RTFA just now) that Canada is the only one in this group who actually thinks for itself? Or dares oppose the more outlandish US proposals? Profits trumping health sounds distinctly Uncanadian, for one thing.

Canada is certainly an outlier, FTFA. All the not-lawyers will have to read the actual negotiations for you.
Who cares what sounds "Uncanadian", the point is there has to be countries holding sovereignty in the debate. Civilization will only benefit. Good or bad IP law will determine the next 100 years of innovation and development and social change.

Why hasn't anyone wondered out loud why the US doesn't have a bunch of bootlickers agreeing with every single one of their proposals? How have they lost their clout SOO quickly? Honestly wondering here.

Re:Go Canada

[Anonymous Coward]

I would personally say it is because the USA has bet the farm on being the monopoly holder on intellectual properties. Look where Hollyweird is, where silicon valley is, etc. A goodly portion of the US's GDP is based on intellectual properties, and ventures related to or hinging upon, intellectual properties or intellectual property laws. (Hollywood, music, software, biomedical, pharmecutical, biotech, etc.)

Compare that with the economies of the other countries implicated, who have GDPs predominantly composed of the trade and sale of material goods.

Given its market position, NATURALLY, the USA would only sign on to an agreement like this, if it could leverage market dominance in that market niche.

Re:Go Canada

[Anonymous Coward]

...or both.

Re:Go Canada

[Nerdfest]

Up until this point a lot of our copyright policy seems to have been dictated by the US. In the last couple of years, I think the US copyright lobby was actually found to be sending the exact text of what they wanted included to the people in Canada responsible for it.

Re:Go Canada

[ebno-10db]

brainwashing/groupthink

That's a very polite euphemism for corruption. The excessive influence of industries concerned about "intellectual property", was bought and paid for. In addition to locking up people, or fining them into penury, for sharing a few songs, it means the foreign and domestic economic policies of the US are distorted in favor of this handful of over-hyped industries, and to the detriment of the rest of the economy.

Re:Go Canada

[ebno-10db]

I would personally say it is because the USA has bet the farm on being the monopoly holder on intellectual properties.

That's a bad bet - something more affected by corruption and propaganda (the wonders of our "post-industrial" economy!) than by any rational policy choice. The excessive and corrupt influence of the "intellectual property" and financial parts of our economy hurts the rest of the economy. There are limits to the potential value of "intellectual property". It's not as big a part of our economy as is often hyped, other countries can easily produce large parts of it (e.g. movie and music production don't have major barriers to entry), and does anyone really expect other countries to rigorously enforce IP laws that mostly benefit the US, regardless of what trade agreements say?

Re:Go Canada

[bill_mcgonigle]

The US Government is less concerned with the interests of its people than most countries. It's heavily controlled by monied corporate interests, which seek to control the power that comes with having the world's reserve currency and a printing press. Don't worry, this won't last too much longer (which will shock most Americans when their purchasing power falls by 60% or more when everybody else leaves Bretton Woods).

I'm actually more surprised that the interests that worked so hard against SOPA and PIPA are not raising a ruckus this time; most of the same provisions are in the US version of the TPP and it's not even 'just' a law that Congress can theoretically repeal - this is International Treaty, which effectively becomes permanent law under the US Constitution. What's worse, Congress is set to give the Executive Branch FastTrack approval on this treaty.

But, the US Government is less concerned with the interests of its people than most countries.

Re:Go Canada

[SuricouRaven]

That is why the talks are being conducted in secret. What the people don't know about, they can't protest over. Until it's too late.

Re:Go Canada

[ebno-10db]

will shock most Americans when their purchasing power falls by 60% or more when everybody else leaves Bretton Woods

Bretton Woods was abandoned 40 years ago.

As for a reduction in the exchange value of the USD, 60% could only come from a panic, not an accurate readjustment. A panic won't be allowed to happen. If nothing else other countries have too much to lose from it.

OTOH a smaller reduction in the exchange value of the USD would be very good for us. It's idiotic that we've spent so much time and effort post-WWII to prop up the dollar, when it only gives us bigger trade deficits and destroys our industry. There have been a few exceptions, like the Plaza Accord, but that's been long undone, thanks in large part to the corrupt influence of the finance industry.

it's not even 'just' a law that Congress can theoretically repeal - this is International Treaty, which effectively becomes permanent law under the US Constitution

It's not a treaty, it's a "congressional-executive agreement". It requires simple majorities (like an ordinary bill) instead of 2/3 of the senate. It's a constitutional gray area, and it sounds like BS to me when applied to long term agreements like trade "agreements" (treaties in all but name), but they've been upheld. On the bright side they're easier to repeal.

Re:Go Canada

[Anonymous Coward]

In other words, the premise for the negotiations is impossible. US should strive to negotiate these sort of packs with countries or communities in a similar IP and economic development situation, assuming the universal no-pulling-head-out-of-black-hole-that-is-national-interest attitude. This is just a waste of tax payer's money.
  On the other hand, I have a feeling that some of the Wikileaks's documents are almost purposefully wrongly understood for the "anti-capitalist bias" as the Rrrright wing would call it.

Re:Go Canada

[WillAffleckUW]

:Go Canada

I don't think it can. I looked at a map and its sort of suck between the USA and the arctic as far as North South moves go and between Greenland and Siberia East and West.

Um, actually, much of the Arctic is Canada. No matter what those filthy Russians say.

Re:Go Canada

[msobkow]

And thanks to Michael Geist exposing their treasonous texts and clauses, the vast majority of those attempts to usurp Canadian copyright law have been stopped by citizen protests. We owe that man a huge debt of gratitude up here.

Re:Go Canada

[Nerdfest]

I completely agree. As a person who has nothing but contempt for most lawyers, Michael Geist is one I have a vast amount of respect for. He's one of the few people that actually has the interests of Canadians (now and in the future) in mind with his writings and opinions. I wish our 'leaders' and policy makers would take his opinions to heart.

What a poor commentary

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

In summary, what can we conclude from these data? Canada, with by far the most sole-country proposals, seems like it is up to something.

Right, "Canada is up to something" is a great way to report on international negotiations. Okay, they've taken the geek approach of grepping through the drafts instead of reading it in full (fair enough), but at least they could have extracted whatever keywords appear after "Canada" and "oppose" / "propose", to figure out the something it's up to. It's not hard in Perl, gee...

Re:What a poor commentary

[Narcocide]

I can only assume that they must have meant it sarcastically. I analyzed the data they presented and came up with the conclusion that the US and Japan are "up to something," while Canada just seems to have a lot of friends and new ideas. But I didn't read the actual drafts either.

Re:What a poor commentary

[Sockatume]

Yes, this one-page article clearly represents the entirety of his knowledge on the subject, he's obviously not a political science professor or anything.

Re:What a poor commentary

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, he didn't mention actually reading the text, just analyzing, well, meta-data. One could read for understanding. I guess we call that old-school now?

Re:What a poor commentary

[ebno-10db]

Canada is up to something

The only thing Canada is up to is their long planned invasion of the US, with the Great Canuck Hordes swooping down on their battle moose. Instead of the nuclear option, they'll deploy their strategic reserve of maple syrup (pleasantly warmed of course). If you think that's a joke, recall the Great Molasses Flood.

P.S. They'll also try to convince us that that crap they serve is bacon.

Perl? Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is the original article with a little more technical detail. To those interested (like me) what was Perl doing there, it was just a single line script with regex. The rest is R.

Re:Perl? Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

From TFA:

print "$_\n" for @match = $txt =~ m/(?:(?:AU|BN|CA|CL|JP|MX|MY|NZ|PE|SG|US|VN)[0-9]*\/)+(?:AU|BN|CA|CL|JP|MX|MY|NZ|PE|SG|US|VN)[0-9]*/g;
It’s ugly, but it seems to get the job done.

I agree, it's Perl^Wugly. But Python wouldn't be much better. At least we can remove the redundancy in the regex:

countries="(?:AU|BN|CA|CL|JP|MX|MY|NZ|PE|SG|US|VN)[0-9]*"
print "\n".join(re.findall("(?:{0}/)+{0}".format(countries), txt))

Re:Perl? Why?

[ebno-10db]

what was Perl doing there, it was just a single line script with regex

Perl = Pathologically Eclectic 'R' Lister.

Re:Perl? Why?

[biodata]

Why would you use something other than perl for parsing text? This is what perl was designed for and it's most likely faster than anything else scripted. I'm sure you could write a text parser in any language you happen to like, but if you have the skills then perl is the correct tool for this job.

Re:Perl? Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Python version two posts above seems much nicer. Perl is a patchwork of bad choices. And no, the regex handling is not worth the overall brain damage.

Re:Perl? Why?

[biodata]

You have to ask yourself though, is it better to have a nicer looking code or faster execution for a one line regex parser? Perl will always win the performance comparison by a large margin, even if the syntax offends your sense of aesthetics.

Re:Perl? Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Awk is often faster than perl. Especially in cases where pipes are used on multi-core systems, due to parallelism. That is even without converting it to C by using awka.

What Awk cannot do is get you bonus points on the resume buzzword bingo.

Re:Perl? Why?

[bluefoxlucid]

This is hilarious bullshit. Perl is slow, clunky, buggy, and idiotic in many ways. I've had perl scripts that started with 'exit 1;' take several seconds to run: the whole file gets compiled at once; Python incrementally compiles, with a fast syntax check first. Perl and Python both compile to bytecode, not JIT; any feature slow in Python (regex etc) is a legitimate concern, but can be handled by rewriting the back-end library.

"Perl is faster because it was made for this" is stupid. "Perl is faster because nobody has bothered to optimize the relevant code in Python/Ruby/Mono/etc" is sensible, and time sensitive: eventually somebody will bother to do that.

Re:Perl? Why?

[biodata]

Interesting opinions there. I'd be more interested if you came back with actual stats of the execution time of the two pieces of code supplied above, against a large text data set.

Re:Perl? Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

So what you're saying is that we should run our code in the future in order to take advantage of the great advantages of python.

Re:Perl? Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree, it's Perl^Wugly. But Python wouldn't be much better.At least we can remove the redundancy in the regex:

Perl can do that too, and IMO, less ugly than the Python:

my $countries = qr/(?:AU|BN|CA|CL|JP|MX|MY|NZ|PE|SG|US|VN)[0-9]*/;

print "$_\n" for @match = $txt = m|(?:$countries/)+$countries|g;

Re:Perl? Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fixed typo and simplified:
print "$_\n" for $txt =~ m|(?:$countries/)+$countries|g;

Re:Perl? Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

BEGIN {
  # this block will be run at compile time
  exit 1;
}
 
# everything else here runs after the compilation phase

HTH, HAND.

(By the way, Perl is a good language, and you talking rubbish of it probably just says that you have not spent the time learning it properly but are judging its merits based on random 1994-era pieces of code you found on the interwebs. Please take a look at Mark Jason Dominus's book 'Higher-Order Perl' and chromatic's 'Modern Perl'; both are freely available and contain code examples with nice, clean, idiomatic code.)

Re:Perl? Why?

[Darinbob]

OMG I read the summary and title and concluded that if I want the magic power of regular expressions then I must use Perl!

Re:Perl? Why?

[Camel Pilot]

This...

countries="(?:AU|BN|CA|CL|JP|MX|MY|NZ|PE|SG|US|VN)[0-9]*"
print "\n".join(re.findall("(?:{0}/)+{0}".format(countries), txt))

vs

my $countries = qr/(?:AU|BN|CA|CL|JP|MX|MY|NZ|PE|SG|US|VN)[0-9]*/;
print "$_\n" for $txt =~ m|(?:$countries/)+$countries|g;

Much nicer? Biased at all? Beauty is in the eye of the beholder... however in this case it looks like 6 of one kind and half a dozen of the other.

Re:Perl? Why?

[bluefoxlucid]

I've written more Perl than I've written Python, but it was mostly in 2002 when Perl was still relevant. I've written more perl than I've written Awk and Bash and I use Awk extensively in my career as a Unix sysadmin.

It's a shitty language. Perl is full of mature networking modules, ORM frameworks, and other extensions that are absolute garbage despite being in active development for years. It's hard to write good code in perl--so hard that absolute veterans had to inform me of this, since I've only done a handful of mid-size projects in Perl amounting to maybe 30 or 40 thousand lines of code and not the hundreds of KLOC that some of these folks have been through over years.

You know what's funny about really good, highly experienced perl programmers? They complain about how shitty perl is, and especially how shitty other perl programmers are with stuff like "if $a && $b || $c { ... }" talking about how "it's well understood how that works, you don't need parenthesis." It's as much coding style as weird sigil bullshit and slow-as-fucking-balls precompilation, not to mention innocuous code sometimes causing Perl to lose track of its symbol table (so when you 'use MODULE' it works early on, but suddenly the functions aren't callable from the same code blocks later) and the piles and piles of absolute shit like DBIx.

Re:Perl? Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll never change your mind, so I'll just say that you, sir, are Full Of Sh!t.

Re:Perl? Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't relate to any of those things you list in the third paragraph.

And/Or precedence is well-defined across multiple programming languages, and there really aren't that many situations where you actually need to mix both in a single if statement. (Besides, you're missing parentheses in your example there.) Sigils have simple, well-defined rules that mostly relate to how you want to access the data and whether you're accessing a single item or multiple -- it relates to the scalar/list context concept Perl has. The compile phase seems comparable in time to that of other interpreted languages. The symbol table is the symbol table and it doesn't exactly get corrupted unless you do something to it, so I'd appreciate a more concrete example. DBIx is a namespace meant to hold extension modules for DBI (the database connector); it's ridiculous to criticise a namespace with dozens of unrelated modules for christ's sakes.

But I'm glad that the mods found your mostly-fictional rant worthy. Do read Modern Perl to get a nice, in-depth description of the language. (It's available for free!) You seem to have more than a few holes in your knowledge; perhaps it can fill them.

Re:Perl? Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Perl has first-class regular expressions (that is, they are a datatype of their own, rather than something to be held in a string.) A lot of other languages with REs lack that feature which makes their regexps extra-unreadable since they have to add extra escapes, required for strings.

I'm not saying that it's a reason to prefer Perl, but it's more like a reason to avoid those other languages if the project at hand calls for heavy text-parsing.

So wait, who am I supposed to praise and revile?

[cascadingstylesheet]

I thought I was always supposed to praise Canada over the US ... yet they lead us in "sole country" proposals, supposedly an awful, cowboyish thing ... ugh, my Slashdot head must asplode!

I used to think Canada was quite European...

[Joining Yet Again]

...until I actually got to know it. While the political rhetoric is more even-handed and they do have a proper health service, the country is all about big business, just like the US.

Re:I used to think Canada was quite European...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll prefer Canada over the US any day... I got shocked during my first trip there after having spent a few weeks in the US.... They are actually friendly up there and none of that fake bullshit that's down in the US...

Just got to laugh about one of the Canadian border-guards comments.. "They are a bit crazy about their so called security down there" :)

Re:I used to think Canada was quite European...

[Anonymous Coward]

Err...you *do* realise that Europe is all about big business as well, right? It just happens to have a less insane way of going about it because it has so many players to please.

Re:I used to think Canada was quite European...

[jfdavis668]

Having traveled in both France and Quebec, I am amazed at how American Quebec is. They strive to save their French heritage, but it little resembles actual French culture. The two groups have been separated too long. Many of their French customs are as French as US ones are English.

Re:I used to think Canada was quite European...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's funny, every time I go through Calgary for work I get the same "They took are jerbs" attitude from the same low paid security guards that you'd expect out of the deep south. Maybe you're just not a great judge of sincerity.

I would also note that the average Canadian has just as poor taste in beer as the average American. (Although I'd say the same about pretty much every country I've ever visited. No matter how great they claim their beer is it's still the cheapest, most awful shit that sells the most, it's just a question of how bad it is.)

Re:I used to think Canada was quite European...

[Nemyst]

Meanwhile France's French is using more and more English words peppered throughout, or worse, "englishified" words (a word with -ing slapped to it). It's quite weird considering how the French don't particularly like the English.

Re:I used to think Canada was quite European...

[Nemyst]

I'd be curious to compare the political stance before and after Harper's rise to power. To me the difference is quite stark and I feel like things went very much American when he arrived. Anti-environment, anti-science, pro-oil, pro-business, anti-social policies, etc. Heck, we've had more debates on abortion, the capital sentence and other such social issues since he came around than we've had in the decades before.

Re:I used to think Canada was quite European...

[Joining Yet Again]

word with -ing slapped to it

I think that French adds English words like that deliberately to sound as hideous as possible, so they can wave their fist angrily across the Channel for uglifying their language.

Every time I hear "LE blah-ING" I want to punch a Frenchman.

Ceterum autem censeo Disney esse delendam

[MRe_nl]

Against Intellectual Monopoly
https://mises.org/store/Product2.aspx?ProductId=552&AFID=14

How you can know everything about nothing ?

[Crashmarik]

Really I laughed my ass off at this.

Think about the conclusion "The U.S. and Japan are relatively isolated and will have trouble shaping the document the way they want"

Of the countries mentioned which have the largest economies, and the greatest leverage on trade issues ? I'll give you a hint, it's not NZ.

What this poli-sci person did is looked at a convocation of sheep and found out they don't like the wolves policies.

Re:How you can know everything about nothing ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Living in one of the sheep countries, I'm quite worried. I don't actually see anything really to gain from this negotiation, but lots to lose. Our copyright law already was changed 10+ years ago with some obvious US input (DMCA stuff). And it was not for the better.

What do we get out of this? Access to the US market? It's not certain the USA will be able to keep buying everything. You're already living off credit and printing money (and exporting inflation to the rest of the world via the petrodollar - so you buy but you're buying a fair bit with printed dollars!).

Re:How you can know everything about nothing ?

[Xest]

Um, part the reason Japan and the US have such large economies is because of those "sheep".

Wolves aren't worth shit if the sheep have fucked off elsewhere (Europe, China) and left them to starve.

All those countries you call sheep have largely very healthy economies whilst Japan and the US are burdened with debt. Japan and the US need this sort of agreement to help their economies grow so that they can service their debts. The "sheep" are just fighting for a growing economy to boost their standards of living, the "wolves" are fighting for their very survival - i.e. avoiding bankruptcy. Guess which is more important?

Re:So wait, who am I supposed to praise and revile

[Anonymous Coward]

Make up your own damn mind!

Don't worry, eh?

[smittyoneeach]

It's just Mayor Rob Ford's plan to go oot the hoose and take the world off to a the great, white, crystalline North. Beauty, eh?

Re:In summary, what can we conclude from these dat

[Anonymous Coward]

"In summary, what can we conclude from these data? Canada, with by far the most sole-country proposals, seems like it is up to something."

Those shifty Canadians. I knew it.

Or, you could simply conclude that the US is indifferent about copyright laws, because they just buy their way out of the courtroom anyway.

(Believe me, the that is not clouds of innocence over the US. It's a fog of corruption.)

Horrible news website

[Anonymous Coward]

It looks like a bunch of images and headlines exploded al over that web page.
Maybe they just don't support firefox?
I had overlapping images, overlapping headlines.
That stupid scroll bar on the side was overlapping with the text.
This is why I never rtfa.

Re:Horrible news website

[VortexCortex]

I didn't know what you were talking about until I disabled ad-block for the page. Yeesh. Most of those "headlines" are ads.

Re:Horrible news website

[langelgjm]

That happens to me occasionally with Firefox and the Washington Post. If I refresh the page, it usually fixes itself.

How unsurprising

[vikingpower]

The US is being gently pushed ( nudged ) into a beginning of rrelevance. Has already been going on for a couple of years: computer technology, aerospace tech, politics. NSA scandal accelerated it. The sun is going down over US America.

Re:How unsurprising

[dkleinsc]

The US is being gently pushed ( nudged ) into a beginning of irrelevance

I'd consider it more the US government trying to do whatever it can for the 0.1% of the country that pays for the majority of political campaigning, and screw the other 99.9% of us. And whether the US government becomes irrelevant or not, as long as the corporate overlords are happy, the politicians will be kept comfortable.

In the words of Number Two: "But you, like an idiot, want to take over the world. And you don't realize there is no world anymore! It's only corporations!"

Re:How unsurprising

[VortexCortex]

Although it helps, you don't have to stop running to lose your position in a race; The others can simply speed up. When both factors are at work the rate of decline accelerates.

You can trace much of the change in position of USA and others via the amount of essential economies and state resources are privatized, and thus funding promised to them and thus the private interest in influencing politics (deregulation) increased. For instance: Solid Rocket Booster designs have had funding lobbied for based on the merit of bringing and keeping jobs in certain congressman's local economy instead of on the pros / cons of the various designs themselves. The same sort of thing ran amok in Chile in the 70's.

When progress is averse to profit you get stagnation in a private industry -- Like ISPs in the USA: Instead of spending on infrastructure to provide a better service they can simply charge more for less (oversell bandwidth) to make more money. Bits have never been cheaper to distribute and yet their cost doesn't reflect this.

The sun sets not upon one country, but around the world at different times. If we're not careful our country could be next.

Re:How unsurprising

[Anonymous Coward]

Or alternately - the lack of objections from the us and japan imply that the agreement is fundamentally skewed in their favor,
and the objections come in inverse proportion from those who stand to lose the most freedom in exchange for the most money...

Re:How unsurprising

[Talderas]

Fundamentally skewed or it indicates that they drafted the original proposal for the treaty. The original proposal was heavily skewed towards the US-Japan in a fashion that it was known that the other countries would object. The lack of oppositions from the US-Japan is probably also indicative of them giving up certain parts of the proposal for other concessions from the remaining parties. The big thing to look at would be exactly what they're opposing.

Re:How unsurprising

[westlake]

The US is being gently pushed into a beginning of rrelevance.

If the US is so irrelevant, why is the geek so obsessed over its cultural exports and IP?

Re:How unsurprising

[Hognoxious]

Having trouble with the word "beginning", fatso?

Re:How unsurprising

[ebno-10db]

For instance: Solid Rocket Booster designs have had funding lobbied for based on the merit of bringing and keeping jobs in certain congressman's local economy instead of on the pros / cons of the various designs themselves.

Surely that didn't happen during the heyday of the military-industrial complex in the 50's and 60's - an era when our economy was growing hand over fist. I don't like pork, but it's hardly the biggest of our problems.

Re:How unsurprising

[Sabriel]

It might not stay gentle. Do you remember the decline and fall of the Western Roman Empire?

Oh, wait, yeah, that was a while back. Here, some reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_the_Western_Roman_Empire

Hmm, that's a tad indigestible, I need a car analogy. No, a gorilla analogy!

Imagine a tribe of gorillas. Let's call the biggest, strongest, most heavily-armed gorilla "Sam". Luckily enough for the tribe, Sam was actually a fairly nice guy - so long as you purchased his stuff or at least used his bananas to purchase stuff, and didn't draw attention to his tendencies to vanity and his insistence on being in charge - and it really helped that he kept the more aggressive males in check (every so often one'd get nasty where Sam could see it, or even challenge him, and everybody else'd get a reminder of why nobody fought Sam).

When the second-biggest gorilla, a tyrant and almost as big as Sam, collapsed from steroid abuse, things were really starting to look up.

But as time passed, the other gorillas noticed Sam was changing. Now some folk go doddery and forgetful, but Sam, he kept poking through the tribe's stuff, peeking in on them all the time. It was like he'd spent so long keeping a lookout for what his old nemesis did, he couldn't stop doing it. And he started to care less and less about whether the other gorillas complained when he rode roughshod over someone. He even started hassling his own young, creating lots of rules about where they could go, what they could take with them, what they should report back to him, and his punishments got harder too.

Trouble is, it's not just Sam's young and his friends in the tribe that have noticed. Some of those aggressive gorillas, both the older ones who kept their heads down while Sam was in his prime and the younger ones who don't remember how bad it was before Sam became the tribe's silverback, they've noticed too. They've noticed the changes, and they've noticed he's having trouble holding his bananas.

Can you guess what they'll try to do if, some day, Sam can't hold his bananas anymore?

Re:How unsurprising

[ebno-10db]

In the words of Number Two: "But you, like an idiot, want to take over the world. And you don't realize there is no world anymore! It's only corporations!"

On the bright side it's nice to have a Starbucks coffee bar in World Domination Headquarters. They even have cream for the cat.

Re:How unsurprising

[ebno-10db]

I presume that "fatso" is meant ironically from someone who posts as Hognoxious (the hog part being ironic, not the noxious part).

Re:How unsurprising

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm glad someone found your unsupported comment insightful. Congratulations on spotting the decline of the US that, by some accounts, started in the 90s, 80s, 70s, 60s, 50s, and 40s, I for one have witnessed the overwhelming victory of the Soviets, oil barons, and Japanese and I am cowered.

Re:How unsurprising

[ebno-10db]

Do you remember the decline and fall of the Western Roman Empire?

Not personally, no, but I have read about it. One of the things I read is that it took centuries. Perhaps in a few hundred years my descendants in North America will live like characters from "Monty Python and the Holy Grail".

Re:How unsurprising

[ebno-10db]

The US is being gently pushed ( nudged ) into a beginning of rrelevance. Has already been going on for a couple of years: computer technology, aerospace tech, politics.

To the extent we're being pushed into irrelevance it's mostly by shooting ourselves in the foot. Historically decline of great powers has been more because of rent-seeking by domestic special interests, rather than by external causes. For example, the big landholders in the Roman Empire were exempted from taxes. Similarly for the aristocracy in pre-revolutionary France.

Special interests with excessive (and often corrupt) influence in the US? "Intellectual property" interests? Check. Finance? Check. Medical-industrial-insurance complex? Check. We're doing pretty good.

As for China's prominence, predictions are hard to make, especially about the future. I remember the 80's when everybody thought Japan would take over the world. Time will tell.

Re:How unsurprising

[jbcksfrt]

Every number 1 country/empire, or however one chooses to phrase it, will eventually no longer be number 1. So, saying so isn't exactly a bold prediction. And even if or when the US is no longer the most influential country in the world, it will definitely not be irrelevant. Many countries used to be more influential than they are now but are far from irrelevant. See Russia, UK, France, Germany, Turkey, Iran, Italy, Greece, Spain, Japan, China (ascending now, of course), etc.

Re:How unsurprising

[Princeofcups]

The US is being gently pushed ( nudged ) into a beginning of irrelevance

I'd consider it more the US government trying to do whatever it can for the 0.1% of the country that pays for the majority of political campaigning, and screw the other 99.9% of us. And whether the US government becomes irrelevant or not, as long as the corporate overlords are happy, the politicians will be kept comfortable.

In the words of Number Two: "But you, like an idiot, want to take over the world. And you don't realize there is no world anymore! It's only corporations!"

Those 0.1% are not Americans as such. They are international. They have their money scattered all around the world. Dick Cheney is practically a citizen of Dubai. So don't expect them to keep this country in any kind of livable shape. Scrape every last dollar out of the economy, and go live like a king in the Middle East. I worked for currency traders when they devalued the Mexican Peso 20 years ago. Boy was that a feeding frenzy. History will repeat itself.

Re:How unsurprising

[Hognoxious]

Nope, more to do with the negative correlation between reading comprehension/intelligence and obesity.

I used to ride a Harley, before they became fashionable among twats.

Re:How unsurprising

[TubeSteak]

One of the things I read is that it took centuries.

The British Empire fell apart in decades, not centuries.
My point being that the pace of these types of changes has significantly accelerated.
Anyone that thinks America's hegemony can or will linger for centuries is delirious.

Perhaps in a few hundred years my descendants in North America will live like characters from "Monty Python and the Holy Grail".

Anyone that's watched enough sci-fi knows that in the future, everyone is speaks English with a British accent

Re:So wait, who am I supposed to praise and revile

[mrbester]

If you take a simplistic view then US would rather the countries who have Chagas as a major medical problem either die or impoverish themselves for US created treatment. I'd revile the US for that alone.

Re:So wait, who am I supposed to praise and revile

[L4t3r4lu5]

I thought I was always supposed to praise Canada over the US ... yet they lead us in "sole country" proposals, supposedly an awful, cowboyish thing ... ugh, my Slashdot head must asplode!

Narrator:"... And thus cascadingstylesheet did realise that garnering his opinion from the surmisings of others was folly, and set about remedying his ways by sourcing evidence himself and forming opinion based upon fact, not conjecture."

Define negotiation

[Gothmolly]

A negotiation is possible only when both parties can benefit.

Re:Define negotiation

[Anonymous Coward]

Your point being?

Re:Define negotiation

[ebno-10db]

Additionally, what exactly are these parties? "The US" is way too vague, given that we're not entirely monolithic.

Re:Define negotiation

[PPH]

You give us what we want and we won't bomb you into oblivion. Now that's what we call an offer you can't refuse.

We need more decentralization

[Anonymous Coward]

moaaaaaaaar

There's a reason ...

[Anonymous Coward]

And the reason is because the US is once again asking for a one-sided treaty which exalts their stuff, and tries to make the rest of the world subject to their demands.

Fuck you America. Fuck you.

Re:There's a reason ...

[ebno-10db]

Good one! Now I've got one for you, two geeks walk into a bar ...

cool really

[hdpornz]

cool really

'Free Trade Agreement'

[king neckbeard]

Can we drop the nonsense that TPP is a 'free trade agreement?' A free trade agreement would be very simple. Don't bomb us or torture our citizens, and you can trade freely with us. TPP undermines free trade by forcing countries into even further support of anti-capitalism legal monopolies as a condition for not restricting trade.

Re:'Free Trade Agreement'

[MacTO]

Free trade agreements are complex because you are dealing with nations with different laws. The classical examples are the cost of labour or agricultural subsidies, which may give industry in one nation a distinct advantage and result in the destruction of industry in another nation Another example, and one that has popped up a lot lately, has been the protection of service industries that are public in one nation and private in another (like health care).

Now you could write a simple free trade agreement if you wanted, but very few people want that. Very few people want that because it would be a race to the bottom.

Re:'Free Trade Agreement'

[king neckbeard]

If you want to have a complex system of protectionism trade agreement, you can have one of those. Just don't call it a free trade agreement if the reasons for restricting trade go far beyond direct physical harm upon citizens.

Re:'Free Trade Agreement'

[Anonymous Coward]

[ The classical examples are the cost of labour or agricultural subsidies, which may give industry in one nation a distinct advantage and result in the destruction of industry in another nation]

Erm, "result in the destruction of industry in another nation?"

No.

[Now you could write a simple free trade agreement if you wanted, but very few people want that. Very few people want that because it would be a race to the bottom.]

A "race to the bottom?"

No.

In short, just because you claim something doesn't make it true. In fact, in your case, I suggest the exact opposite.

Re:'Free Trade Agreement'

[ebno-10db]

"Free trade agreements" is a propaganda term. We have trade agreements, but they're not about "free trade".

The classical examples are the cost of labour or agricultural subsidies

Eliminate them or it's not a "free trade" agreement. Don't talk about "complexities" when you're merely distorting the issue.

Re:'Free Trade Agreement'

[Blaskowicz]

No, you're conflating freedom with winner-takes-all, deregulated crony "capitalism".

Re:'Free Trade Agreement'

[Blaskowicz]

Eliminate the cost of labout? I see what you did there..

Re:'Free Trade Agreement'

[ebno-10db]

I'm shooting for a job as a trade and labor negotiator.

Re:'Free Trade Agreement'

[king neckbeard]

Free trade would be deregulated trade. That's what 'free' means here. Uninhibited. Success and failure in such would be based upon the market. Now, this may or may not be a good thing. We are talking about the meaning of free trade, not 'good trade.' You can have a trade agreement that isn't a free trade agreement, and that sounds like what you want. That's fine. Just don't call it a free trade agreement.

BTW, TPP is pretty much the definition of crony capitalism, in which the regulations and lack thereof are based upon what best suits industries and players within with strong ties to the government.

Re:'Free Trade Agreement'

[Princeofcups]

Can we drop the nonsense that TPP is a 'free trade agreement?' A free trade agreement would be very simple. Don't bomb us or torture our citizens, and you can trade freely with us. TPP undermines free trade by forcing countries into even further support of anti-capitalism legal monopolies as a condition for not restricting trade.

It is kind of free, free of government interference. It's really just the uber rich fucks agreeing amongst themselves how to split up the world.

Re:'Free Trade Agreement'

[king neckbeard]

It's not free of government interference, it is government interference. The uber-rich fucks are scared as hell of a world in which the government doesn't protect them.

Re:'Free Trade Agreement'

[Uberbah]

Free trade would be deregulated trade.

Backwards. You have to have regulation to have a free market or trade for buyers and sellers. Otherwise you have monopolies acting as barriers and hoarding resources to artificially increase the price of their stocks.

You down with TPP?

[Pikoro]

Yah you know me!

Where are the other countries

[fritsd]

When I looked at the map, I saw the following countries were missing from the list (plus lots of Oceania countries): Russia, China, Taiwan, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor, Fiji, Ecuador, Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala.

Isn't it odd that at least Russia, China, Taiwan, Indonesia and Panama are excluded? I'd imagine they do lots of trade across the Pacific Ocean (for Panama I meant transport rather than production).

Re:Where are the other countries

[Random2]

It's because they didn't want to apparently

"The negotiations to set up the TPSEP initially included three countries (Chile, New Zealand and Singapore), and Brunei subsequently joined the agreement. The original TPSEP agreement contains an accession clause and affirms the members' "commitment to encourage the accession to this Agreement by other economies".

In January 2008 the United States agreed to enter into talks"

Basically most of the current countries joined after-the-fact, it was originally only Chile, New Zealand, and Singapore.

Perl and R are for losers

[Anonymous Coward]

No one will take this news seriously unless it uses Python and Ruby, because choosing a trendy language is an important part of being one of the cool kids.

Re:In summary, what can we conclude from these dat

[parkinglot777]

Political scientists often talk about dyads, by which we simply mean groups of two. ... If we did this for every possible dyad, we could compare the frequency of dyads and get a sense of how often countries’ negotiating positions overlap.

I hope the above quote from the TFA may answer what you are looking for when you look at the chart on the TFA...

Re:In summary, what can we conclude from these dat

[Anonymous Coward]

More importantly why is there is no link to the Perl, regexs, and R code used to analyse the data and consequently allowed the the PhD candidate to draw such conclusions?

Why mention the languages at all?

[Lamps]

It seems that mentioning certain functionalities or modules associated with particular languages used in the analysis, unless these features do not exist in other languages (and thus, are a topic worthy of discussion on their own right), trivializes the research itself.

wel...

[buddyglass]

Just looking at the graphs, it appears Japan is approximately as isolated as the U.S.

Re:In summary, what can we conclude from these dat

[ebno-10db]

Mod parent up, and ask him if he can also write haiku.

Author here

[langelgjm]

Hi, I'm the author of the article. Thanks for reading it. Originally I thought I might extract the "oppose/propose" and attach it to country names, but I didn't for a number of reasons.

First, as you note, "oppose/propose" by itself tells us very little without knowing the content of what is being opposed/proposed. But even if we do know the content, without the context it may still convey little. E.g., we might find "[US propose: a]" or "[CA oppose: the]". I thought about using Perl's extract_bracketed (and actually did at first), but decided against it.

Second, anyone familiar with these issues already knows where the countries line up. The US is pushing extreme IP laws. Australia doesn't necessarily agree, but follows along in many cases. Canada often tries to do its own thing (e.g., they were one of the only countries to take advantage of a TRIPS provision allowing them to manufacture an on-patent drug and export it to a developing country without manufacturing capacity). So showing people this information wouldn't necessarily add much value.

Re:Author here

[bluefoxlucid]

A few tips: Python re is better than Perl's regular expressions; and Python RPy directly integrates R.

Re:Author here

[Anonymous Coward]

shouldn't you include a weighting by "has intellectual property to protect" and "has needs but no intellectual property" to see if what is going on is actually a Robin Hood effect. Or would that not support your goals.

Re:Author here

[Crashmarik]

"That specific line was actually written by the editor, not by me. I would not agree that the US and Japan (mostly the US, though) will have trouble shaping the document the way they want. In fact, the US has shaped the document to its preferences to a large degree already."

Well then, that changes this from how very smart people can overlook the big things because they become wrapped up in minutiae, to how news organs pick and manipulate what is news to promote agendas.

Re:Author here

[Anonymous Coward]

A few tips: Python re is better than Perl's regular expressions; and Python RPy directly integrates R.

Why is Python's better?

Thanks

[langelgjm]

Author of the article here. You're right, I meant it to be a little funny. As I noted to the GP, most people studying these issues already know where the countries line up. Canada has a history of being different on IP issues than the US (much to the US's chagrin - it's why we put them on the Special 301 "priority watch list" in 2012).

Re:Thanks

[xOneca]

[...] it's why we put them on the Special 301 "priority watch list" in 2012).

I am from Spain and last year we were no more in the 301 list. I want to be on that list again!! (Thankfully, I think this year we are going to be in the rank)

The US creates more than the rest combined

[jfdavis668]

In my travels in Europe and Asia, I am amazed at how often I run across US products. Not manufactured, but copyrighted. Most movies are American. Most people use language specific versions of American websites. People Google things. The hang out on Facebook. Many of the items they used, though made elsewhere, were designed an copyrighted in the US. So yes, the copyright laws to protect these ideas would be lopsided.

Re:The US creates more than the rest combined

[Hairy1]

It isn't like its the wild west out there; we already have strong copyright legislation. What the TPPA is seeking is corporate control over the ability to exclude people from the internet at will, with no judicial oversight. To a large extent it already does; I dared to critique the Business Software Allience on YouTube and my account was closed. No comeback here - to challenge it I would need to agree to defending myself in California. Unless you are a U.S citizen there is no fair use or free speech on YouTube, Facebook, Google, Yahoo etc. You are there at their pleasure, and easily ejected.

The TPPA seeks to extend this power to your local ISP; to actually cut you off from the net totally if you are saying things they don't like.

It isn't about protecting works, it is about controlling the channel. The Internet was a danger to corporate control of how people got their entertainment and information. They are now getting the people back under control, subservient to their masters like they should be. The thing is that most are happy with having their entertainment and information fed to them, told what they should be angry about.

The risk to Hollywood isn't that we will steal their content - it is that we will discover their content is gilt covered crap, and that we can beginb to express ourselves without getting one hundred million dollars from a VC. What the RIAA and MPAA care about is making sue that they control the music we listen to and the movies we watch.

That is the focus of the TPPA. Control.

Re:The US creates more than the rest combined

[PPH]

Not manufactured, but copyrighted.

A necessity to keep IP from being stolen by US entities. Prior art or prior use in other jurisdictions has little standing in US courts, so foreign manufacturers obtain US copyrights and patents.

Most movies are American.

Ah yes. The movie industry. One of the last bastions of organized crime in the USA. Most movies you watch are American because the US studio system throws roadblocks up for the distribution of content other then their own. Who do you think created The Office? A few notable works do manage to push their way through the US distribution blockade to success like The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. Even then, US studios had to try and appropriate that concept for their own with a shit US remake.

Here's a link

[langelgjm]

Here's a link with more technical detail. I had to tone down the technical aspects for the Washington Post.

That link does not have full code, but if you want, I can e-mail it to you (I already have for two other people). I didn't post the code online because I wanted to keep track of who was asking for it. But I'm happy to share it.

Re:Here's a link

[fatphil]

Did you ever do a "countries on springs" analysis such that countries which concur with each other are pulled together, and those that disent are pushed apart? Similar to the 3rd quartile cutoff one, but with all countries, and with distance made more significant.

One way I've done this in the past is to stick all dots on the unit sphere, anneal them into a stable position on that sphere with a suitable repulsion law, and then to squash the sphere. Chose a random point on the surface, conformally map the sphere minus that point onto a unit disc, re-anneal, and chose the outcome with lowest energy. Random point selection will naturally find the biggest open areas, bordered by the most repulsive countries, ones which deserve to be on the peripheries of the flattened diagram.

Hehe, I like the idea of the US being the most repulsive country. ;-)

Re:Here's a link

[langelgjm]

I did not try that, but the R igraph package does have a "spring" layout, so I may give it a shot. Thanks!

Author here

[langelgjm]

Hi, I'm the author of the article. I have read the text (well, not all of it, just the portions relevant to my research - mostly copyright and pharmaceutical data exclusivity aspects, as well as the traditional knowledge article). However, I'm not a lawyer, and many lawyers have already analyzed the legal aspects of the text. That's why I linked to Margot Kaminski, Michael Geist, etc. in the article.

I thought my analysis would be valuable if it did something the lawyers were not (and could not) do.

Author here

[langelgjm]

That specific line was actually written by the editor, not by me. I would not agree that the US and Japan (mostly the US, though) will have trouble shaping the document the way they want. In fact, the US has shaped the document to its preferences to a large degree already.

But, it is more complex than simply the US getting what it wants. The US can't force anyone to sign this agreement. There have to be benefits in other areas for these countries to trade away IP issues. Unfortunately we don't have texts from the other chapters, so we don't really know what these might be. Also, the fact that there is a draft article on traditional knowledge indicates that some of the parties are pushing back with their own preferences (though I think that particular article has zero chance of making it into an agreement).

Submitter/author here

[langelgjm]

Well, to be honest, I wanted to get it posted to /., so I thought I'd highlight the fact that OSS made it possible.

Re:Submitter/author here

[Lamps]

Got it. It's just that it's probably more common than not to use open source languages/software for research and academic purposes (I've used R, Matlab, Perl, and Python in my own stuff), so it's a bit unusual to hear it mentioned prominently, unless it comes with an explanation of what particular features those tools had which made it worthwhile to mention them (i.e. different results might occur with other packages, or the functionality in some package is not known to be available anywhere else, etc.).

However, it's cool to see credit being given where it's due, whatever the underlying reasons.

Re:Submitter/author here

[langelgjm]

Definitely true in most sciences, but not the norm in political science (yet). A lot of political scientists are still using proprietary packages... in my department, I think there are only two people (myself included) who use R. Everyone else uses Stata. For text processing, some people use Nvivo rather than free alternatives. Also, code-sharing for facilitating replication is still not standard practice, though some journals are now requiring submitters to address this.

New visualizations with D3

[langelgjm]

Author of the article here. Michael Simeone from the University of Illinois asked for my data and code so that he could experiment with some D3 visualizations. He did a little bit last night, and I thought I'd share the results.

Thanks

[langelgjm]

I've never used Python, though I did read this article from R-bloggers yesterday that made me think I should probably start learning it.

I used Perl mostly because it's what I grew up with, though I rarely do that kind of coding anymore.

Normalization?

[Bill Dimm]

Canada, with by far the most sole-country proposals, seems like it is up to something.

Doesn't the raw number of sole-country proposals seem like the wrong metric? It seems more sensible to divide the number of sole-country proposals by the total number of proposals for that country to see what fraction of its proposals have no support from other countries. From the next to last graph, it seems that Canada has both a lot of sole-country proposals and a lot of joint proposals. If the fraction of Canada's proposals that are sole proposals is not particularly high, the large number of Canadian sole-country proposals would just reflect them making a lot of proposals in general -- you might conclude that they are just putting more effort into getting the treaty right (in their opinion) than other countries. I only skimmed the article -- did I miss something?

Anyway, interesting analysis. Unfortunate that the Washington Post didn't make the graphs available in a format that is large enough to read the labels.

P.S. I'm not Canadian.

Re:Normalization?

[langelgjm]

I'm adding a table showing the ratio of sole country proposals to total proposals from that country. It does change the order, though the main observations remain intact. Japan, the US, and Canada, come at the top, Malaysia and Brunei at the bottom.

Re:Normalization?

[Bill Dimm]

For anyone that is looking for it, the table was added in this blog post, not on the Washington Post site.

Re:Normalization?

[bussdriver]

The data source seems flawed from the start. Changes to it may be documented but the initial proposals before the leak; that is, the ones who drafted it initially, have a huge influence. Knowing that information would likely end up in huge changes. The USA likely would have the most proposals and that would be a good reason for them having fewer of them at this phase of the process.

The approach and tool use is interesting. It highlights another way to analyze or summarize such things; although, I'm not sure it should be used in this realm. Negotiations are so subtle and complicated no metrics and charts can do it justice. That said, it's probably harmless because few people will use it in this way... unless somebody takes the newer US house/senate rules that puts names with amendments and starts drawing graphs on the politicians... (The dyads for them could be quite use useful.)

Could one use apply this in a more practical way so we can bring in game theory computation? I can't think of one; which is why i ask.

Re:Normalization?

[langelgjm]

This draft text is dated August 30, 2013. You're absolutely right that earlier (and later) texts will likely reveal very different patterns. So what I did is really just a snapshot in time. Ideally, I would have had multiple texts in chronological order, which would make it possible to provide an animation of changing patterns.

However, I'd argue that having any insight into the process, even if it's just a single point in time, is better than nothing. We'd all like to see more transparent negotiations, along with legitimate releases of draft texts, but for now we're stuck with Wikileaks.

Re:What The Holy Fuck?

[ebno-10db]

Newsflash: geek website uses specialized geek terminology.

Trying to prove a preconception?

[Anonymous Coward]

The analysis is interesting. Even though I do not disagree with some of the assertions, for example, big business influence, I think US is hardly alone in this. JP has been conduction policies that benefit Japanese corporations for years (hardly surprising). It seems that when US and some other country have a similar data point, there's somehow a good reason for this other country, but not the US.
Author seems to have made up his mind, and is trying to find proof for what he already "knows". Including some really questionable statement, like "natural" connection between Peru and Chile. These countries have been bitter rivals for years, and even though things change, I'd attribute any agreement to coincidental interest overlap rather than some sort of a concert between the two countries.
None of this is meant to suggest that I don't think there are no problems with this treaty (secrecy being one of them). I just wish that these sorts of analyses were based more on data and reality instead of some preconceived notions.

Re:Trying to prove a preconception?

[langelgjm]

Actually, the graphs did not entirely match what I expected to see. I expected far more concordance between the US and Australia, the US and Japan, and Australia and New Zealand than what I actually saw. I wrote the analysis after generating the graphs in an attempt to explain what I was seeing. FWIW, one of the reasons I did this was to contribute something to the discussion of the TPP that was actually based on data, rather than just a general "feel" one gets after reading the leaked text.

I did note in the article that Japan appears to be just as isolated. But I don't know how Japanese businesses influence their government nearly as well as how I know US businesses influence the U.S. Trade Representative, so I didn't focus on that in the article.

As for the Peru/Chile statement, I called such connections "natural" based primarily on geographical proximity or shared languages. I think it's entirely reasonable to expect more overlap of positions in an international trade negotiation between countries on the same continent, speaking the same language, than between far-flung continents with totally different languages. Such a connection doesn't mean anything more than that the countries agree on an issue in the text.

Re:What The Holy Fuck?

[Lamps]

The submitter presumably thought that enough people on /. should be familiar with R, the most popular statistical programming language, or from the context (i.e. R is mentioned together with Perl), would infer that it's a language, and google, "r language", or something along those lines. These assumptions seem pretty reasonable. Here's a bit of help:

http://www.r-project.org/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_(programming_language)

To be clear

[phorm]

The Canadian *people* are more vocal about IP issues. The government has been ramming US-style copyright down our throat whenever possible, even to the extent of secretly suggesting the US put us on the 301 list in order to induce stronger copyright enforcement in Canada...

Re:In summary, what can we conclude from these dat

[davester666]

It's just Harper vacuuming Obama's balls dry, shilling for the US by doing the dirty work of introducing all the crap the US wants in there, but this way, it makes the agreement seem more 'international' instead of primarily being dictated solely by the US.

It all comes down to the US Constitution

[WillAffleckUW]

13 years for patent with one renewal during the life of the human who patented it (corporations were not mentioned in the US Constitution even though they predate America).

17 years for copyright with one extension during the life (or year of death if married or having children) of the human who wrote something.

All else is fiction.

Re:What The Holy Fuck?

[WillAffleckUW]

In statistics we use R and S as packages, mostly R.

Why are other countries supporting this anyway?

[jonwil]

Why are countries like Australia, Canada and others supporting this kind of crap?
These kinds of trade agreements give greater powers to big US IP holders (Hollywood, big pharma etc etc etc), they dont give any of the reductions in agricultural protectionism that countries like Australia want and they probably have very little benefit in terms of actually reducing trade barriers.

So why don't countries like Australia say "no, we wont sign up to a treaty that gives a whole pile of benefits to big US corporations and almost zero benefits to us"?
Its not like the US is holding a gun to their backs forcing them to sign.

Re:Why are other countries supporting this anyway?

[Anonymous Coward]

Australia likes all the NSA data and is only too happy to take one for the team if it means we can keep our access.

Don't forget the TTIP

[manu0601]

USA is also working on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership with the EU. That one is supposed to be done in 2015, and it seems surrounded by much more secrecy.

Re:So wait, who am I supposed to praise and revile

[cascadingstylesheet]

Was the sarcasm really not evident? Wow.