How Perl and R Reveal the United States' Isolation In the TPP Negotiations 152
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."
Re:How unsurprising (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Go Canada (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Author here (Score:4, Insightful)
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 [keionline.org] 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:Go Canada (Score:5, Insightful)
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.