Slashdot Mirror
Can I See Your License for those Plants, Sir?
McGruff writes: "A Canadian court has ruled that a farmer growing genetically modified canola without a license violated Monsanto's patent and owes damages. Percy Schmeiser claims that the seeds blew onto his farm from passing seed trucks and from neighboring farms. The court held that regardless of whether he planted them deliberately or if he merely found them growing on his farm, it was his responsibility to destroy the seeds and seedlings or pay royalties. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is carrying the article and the Federal Court of Canada has the full
text of the ruling in PDF form."
Monsanto is to Microsoft what the Borg are to Dr. Evil (Austin Powers). Bill's pathetic little attempts to take over the world with some crummy software has got nothing on the company that owns the genetic rights at least one ingredient in something like 80% of all the food we eat. If that doesn't scare you, I bet you're running an unpatched version of Bind (or IE 5 ;-)
*sing* I'm a karma whore and I'm okay....
I work all night and I post all day
In Soviet Russia, hot grits put YOU down THEIR pants.
God is suing, well, everybody, for violating his patent on cellular mitosis. Many people are using the 'my cells do it on thier own, I don't even know what that word means' defence, but the judge involved does not buy that. He says 'As soon as you realized that you weren't dead, you should have started paying the royalties, scumass.'
Brant
Brant
Argle. Bargle.
Hmmm, I could have sworn I was reading something a few years back regarding monsato. It was about them introducing a type of seed that could not produce seeds once it germinated. This was so that farmers would have to continue buying crop seed from monsato every season. I wonder what would happen if somehow these seeds "blew off a truck" and began spreading slowly? Would this contribute to a worldwide food shortage?
There is no spork.
That's the excuse that I used when the cops found my harvest of Mary Jane! Trust me, it doesn't hold up in court!
Keeping
So next time you could have patent owning companies purposely mixing some of their seeds with normal seeds and then claiming the present crops be destroyed or ask for royalties.
There's always sufficient, but not always at the right place nor for the right folks.
This is truly fantastic, and it doesn't end with poor farmers.
For instance, say you're eating a genetically modified apple. The seeds drop into your flowerpot and starts growing, and voilà - you have to pay!
Would something like the echelon movement do here? What I mean is that people include words that trigger echelon in sigs and what not. In the same spirit, people could just get their hands on lots and lots of genetically modified and patented seeds, and plant them everywhere all over the earth - in public places, parks, governmental areas.
Not that that would be good for our poor planet, since we have no idea what can come of this genetic engineering with nature...
:wq!
If his neighbor buys the seed, and he doesn't, but a bee pollenates between the two plants (I assume this happens, but I don't know for sure), and his seeds start to contain the Monsanto 'patented genes', then what? The decision Monsanto won says that he STILL owes them royalties.
I think this is the ultimate form of 'viral' marketing -- by selling to one farmer, and shutting up for a long time, they could (potentially) get all farmers in Canada (and, potentially, the U.S.) to owe them money.
*sniff* Hmmm... *sniff* *sniff* something smells rotten. *sniiiiiiiiff* I think it's coming from the patent offices around the world...
Among the things Monsanto has done is a "brand" of potato which produces it's own round-ups.
Ie, if for instance a Colorado bug gets to a Monsanto potato and starts eating, in a few minutes it falls dead on the ground.
And people are supposed to eat that food.
Probable scenarios in the future is that genetically modified food spreads it's DNA to "real" plants, eg via pollination, and then some day a disease shows up that Monsanto didn't think about. Woops! All our crops are dead!
What to do? Where to get the original seeds?
:wq!
Hmm, i'm getting a severe disconnect here. So, since harvesting and replanting are what s33d h4x0rz do, just what exactly have 3000 generations of farmers been up to behind the "nothing going on here, just sowing and reaping, move along now" publicity smokescreen?
But more seriously, this case just shows, again, why we are not (will never be?) ready for licensed self-replicating organisms. The fact is, pollen flies on the wind, birds move seeds around, mammals move seeds around, insect move pollen around, seeds fly on the wind, are washed downstream by the rain, get stuck to tyres... basically anything with DNA in it is a highly optimised self-replicator, and no amount spent on lawyers is going to fix that.
Monsanto's business model for GM product can only work if they can prevent or outlaw the very mechanisms which have enabled Monsanto executives to evolve (sic) in the first place. A more religious man than I would describe it as a sin. I just describe it as deceiving their shareholders if they really claim the GM model will ever be profitable. After all, if the GM organisms are 'superior', then eventually they WILL colonise and replace all the current 'natural' (quotes because 10,000 years of human civilisation means 'nature' is a construct anyway) varieties in fairly short order anyhow.
I also draw the jury's attention to the Rice Tec Corporation of Alvin, Texas and their ludicrous claim on Basmati Rice, just because it makes me hopping mad every time I think about it
TomV
Offtopic, I know, but I saw your sig, and ... well ... not sure if there's an official continuation of that song, but, well, the creative juices are flowing this morning and here's my version
I'm a Karma Whore and I'm ok,
I work all night and I post all day.
I troll slashdot
And flame JonKatz,
I like to get first post
I have a dozen accounts
But use HiNote the most
I'm a Karma Whore and I'm ok,
I work all night and I post all day.
I post AC,
Reply to sigs
I complain and I whine
I like to spell micro$oft
With a dollar sign
I'm a Karma Whore and I'm ok,
I work all night and I post all day.
I flame a lot
I use 1337 5p34k
Then people envy me
I wish I was hacker
Not just a skript kiddie
I'm a Karma Whore and I'm ok,
I work all night and I post all day.
It is certainly withing the police power of the state to place an obligation not to use the seeds upon the farmer, even if they blow there. *However*, if these seeds are waste of such a type, which imposes an obligation to act upon the farmer, then the entry of the seed onto his property was a tresspass, for which he is entitled to damages--includeing the cost of removing them, lost profits from not being able to use the contaminated portion of his land, etc.
hawk, esq.
You know, i've figured out what this reminds me of. Salem. Traditional witchhunts. And why?
Because Percy has to test every single plant on his farm for contamination, and unless he's got a very sophisticated lab on the farm, there's only one simple test I can think of right now.
Just spray the whole farm with Roundup. Any plant that survives is a non-licensed Monsanto product and should be destroyed. Easy, and cheap.
After all, everyone knows witches float 'cos they're made of wood?
TomV
say you're eating a genetically modified apple. The seeds drop into your flowerpot and starts growing, and voilà - you have to pay!
That's why Monsanto uses the Terminator gene. Descendants of a Terminator seed are sterile. At the same time, Monsanto makes the farmer dependant and reduces genetically engineered being in the wild.
__
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
The Canadian farmers started to accuse Monsanto of cross pollinating a while ago. Farmers near fields with "those gall darn ge'tic seeds" found that Monsanto seed ended up in their crop. Fears of an uncontrollable cross pollinated world of genetically altered food started to be thrown about. What happened next?
Monsanto spied on farmers, then "burned" farmers fields in order to destroy evidence. When caught, Monsanto said they were "testing" fields. Hmm, and flew night missions in Cessnas to carry out these "normal" activities. Yea... sure.
And now they win a court case against a farmer who has complained about Monsanto seed in his crop before. I don't care if the whole field is full of Genetic seed, it's still Monsantos responsibility.
Monsanto wants to own the worlds food before the farmer does. It's insidious!
They have killed before, they will kill again.
______
jeff13
--
You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.
'As soon as you realized that you weren't dead, you should have started paying the royalties...'
It's called "tithing". A 10% "voluntary" income tax payable to the (Christian - various denominations) church.
A large fraction of the population of Europe did it for centuries, and some people do it to this day.
Some non-Christian churches have a similar custom.
(I wonder how long it will take for patent holders to start claiming a divine right to royalties, by analogy with kings who claimed a divine right to rule as the next level below God in an "executive branch" responsible for temporal governance.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Are raw potatoes really poisonous?!? I eat them all the time!!!!
It's the rest of the plant that's toxic, at least most of the time. Don't eat a potato that's sprouting or getting a green layer beneath the skin. (You may not become obviously ill with just a green layer, but it's not advisable anyhow.)
That's one reason a potato is such a useful plant: It kills off most insects that try to eat it. (Unfortunately there are other organisms that attack it, and since potatoes are reproduced mainly by cloning they have little diversity. That's why a blight led to the Irish Potato Famine.)
I hear the toxin involved is not broken down by cooking temperatures.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Could a farmer bill another for letting his seed contaminate his land?
If you read the judgement, there is a section towards the end where the judge mentions the "Stray Bull Law", which basically states: if your bull loose, and has its way with my cows, I own the offspring, but if it causes me any harm that your bull banged my cows, you owe me.
Going on means going far
Going far means returning
Going on means going far
Going far means returning
Cultivate GM seeds from some farmers fields. Plant said seeds in competing farmers fields (make sure it's a larfe farm). Turn in the farm to monsanto, write letters to the editor about hos Monsanto is going to bankrupt farmers. Repeat until monstanto lawyers are too busy to sue anybody else. Voila a DOS attack on monsanto and a clever culture hack to align the farmers against Monsanto. If nothing else it would add one more fuse to the powderkeg known as the inland west.
War is necrophilia.