[R] R project and the TPP

[Spencer Graves]

On 2/4/2016 6:59 PM, David Winsemius wrote:
>> On Feb 4, 2016, at 3:15 PM, Rolf Turner <r.turner at 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