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Open Source Life?
JimCricket writes "What happens when a bio-cracker unleashes a plant virus on all the wheat in North America, and the genetic code to 'Wheat 2.0' is closed-source, patented code owned by a corporation? Should life be Open Source? Download Aborted takes a look at this issue."
Sounds strange, outlandish, fantasy... not really.
In the real world, the article mentions the Monsanto Case against Percy Schmeiser. Their seed ended up on his land through no fault of his, yet they claim they have a right to be paid license fees or to force him to spend his time and money removing corn derived from their migrating seed.
It's not just scary that the courts will side with them on this and let them steamroll over innocent parties, but that they cannot control the spread of their lab-grown genes. One of the "fictional" premises of White Death is that even without an evil plot, a GMO could escape its farm environment and reproduce in the wild, gradually replacing the formerly dominant species on a genetic level. The problem is that this GMO has defects and liabilities that are unknown, and while it might last long enough to marginalize the genes of the wild organism it's replacing, something could come along and wipe out the newly dominant GMO en masse, leaving stocks of that animal or plant decimated worldwide.
Frightening.
Start a happiness pandemic
...ultimately creating genetic viruses that override us and make us slaves to the system!
Its just ruminations on someones blog and should be treated as such.
Aren't we all on low carb diets anyway?
who's moderating the meta-moderators?
Another great win for corperate America!!!
And don't forget the F.U.D. that will be spread about any opensource that does come out. How do you know that Wheat is safe to eat without Wheat 2.0 Update?
So what happens when somebody takes that publically-owned (or God-owned, depending on your point of view) invention and patents it?
If you believe in religion everything is owned by God thus it isn't "public".
I officially put my own genetic code under the terms of the LGPL. You can redistribute me and my clones as you like, as long as they remain in the LGPL themselves. If I participate in the reproduction, all the better. You see, the reason I put it in the LGPL is that I am not picky as to who I "link my code" with ;)
The perfect sig is a lot like silence, only louder
but I resent the comparison of Gates and God. Despite 99.9% of the field of science being reverse engineering.
At least it's not copy protected, well except for the atom.
So, can I release my genes under the GPL? Or will I have to find a different license?
EVERYDAY IS CATURDAY
Genetic life should not be able to be owned. It would be the same as if I owned the DNA sequence to create a fish. Would it also mean that each person technically owns their DNA or any other type of unique chemical composition? This could open up an extremely dangerous black market of genetic trade. ie: I could sell my DNA strand on the black market for money, and then I could be freely cloned etc.
I got off topic, just thinking out loud.
Aj
GroupShares Inc. - A Free and Interactive Stock Market Community
-------
artlu.net
beat it down until it goes away.
Would closed source life be considered "oppression"?
Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) [web1913]
Oppression \Op*pres"sion\, n. [F., fr. L. oppressio.]
1. The act of oppressing, or state of being oppressed.
2. That which oppresses; a hardship or injustice; cruelty;
severity; tyranny. ``The multitude of oppressions.'' --Job
xxxv. 9.
3. A sense of heaviness or obstruction in the body or mind;
depression; dullness; lassitude; as, an oppression of
spirits; an oppression of the lungs.
There gentlee Sleep First found me, and with soft
oppression seized My drowsed sense. --Milton.
4. Ravishment; rape. [Obs.] --Chaucer.
WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]
oppression
n 1: the act of subjugating by cruelty; "the tyrant's oppression
of the people" [syn: subjugation]
2: the state of being kept down by unjust use of force or
authority: "after years of oppression they finally
revolted"
3: a feeling of being oppressed [syn: oppressiveness]
A friend will come and bail you out of jail, a true friend will be sitting next to you saying, "damn that was fun!"
We'll be able to clean up the "intellectual property" law train wreck pretty easily once all the lawyers have starved to death, anyway.
Also, I predict that it will become illegal to import cheaper wheat from Canada due to "safety considerations".
"Skill shows through where genius wears thin." -Wittgenstein || Religion: uniting aviation and architecture.
I'm not a lawyer or biologist, but it may be interesting to compare this issue to what's going on in the software industry. There are some clear similarities between genetic code (the blueprint for lifeforms) and software code
I disagree. Genetic code is a mapping of biological cells used to translate RNA codons, and is representational of a natural reality. Software code implements programs or data for some purpose, but is creative. There is a fundamental difference between the two, IMO.
Sigs cause cancer.
What happens when a bio-cracker unleashes a plant virus on all the wheat in North America, and the genetic code to 'Wheat 2.0' is closed-source, patented code owned by a corporation?
People owning oat and barley futures make a small fortune.
That would seriously be a good way of making money.
Step 1: Make nasty wheat virus
Step 2: Buy barley and oat futures
Step 3: Release nasty wheat virus
Step 4: Profit!
"I can plant an apple tree, but it's unfair for me to restrict my neighbor from taking advantage of the same genetic code if a seed falls on his land. If I sell my apples, my customers are free to plant the seeds contained within each apple."
So that's how Apple makes G5s...a G5 tree
Don't mistake DNA and software. When someone creates a virus will we be able to fix it quickly and minimize its effects?
We don't understand DNA as well as we do code. For now closed is better.
sig
The universe is closed source, and theres been no problems, if it was open source I don't think we'd have as many hackers hacking on stuff, reverse engineering the cosmos.
Didn't you see mimic? The won't die because you engineered them to, they'll get bigger and bigger and then start killing humans. Just like the wheat obviouslly would.
My mistake.
what prevents a bioterrorist from grabbing a sample of regular wheat and making a virus for it? where is the new vulnerability?
So, do you support the LGPL? (Remember if they don't agree to the terms than they can't distribute or accept "code" under those terms.)
The plus side is we can get the soon-to-be-unemployed SCO lawyers to help you with the derivitive works suits.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
corporations which're indulging in despicable patent activities, often at the cost of developing nations and in atleast one case farmers who've been using the so called "innovation" since thousands of years. Case in point: India Fights U.S. Basmati Rice Patent .
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
http://guerrillanews.com/contaminated/
Excellent video (QT) link to the right of that page.
Everyone knows not to eat wheat 1.0, but wait for a later version.
It's too buggy.
I thought the main reasons to be open source was so that
1)you can get help from developers across the world and
2)so that the code can be scrutinised by many eyes and bugs can be very quickly patched.
without a myriad of good guys being able to scrutinise the genetic structure of the plants the badguys are more likely to find an unpatched weakness, opposed to having to disassemble and map the plants genetic structure first.
This raises the question:
is open source only effective when there are more good guy than bad guys?
How many computers are too many?
GMO could escape its farm environment and reproduce in the wild, gradually replacing the formerly dominant species on a genetic level.
Ye gods! It's xbill all over again!
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
Trying to use some far fetched scenario using a completely different thing to justify their holy crusade to force the world to their beliefs..
Sounds alarmist to me. If anyone pulled a stunt like that, their patent would be revoked, if only due to popular protest. People on /. ascribe a little too much power to corporations. If the price of wheat bread goes up 10x, you better believe there's going to be some popular protest - and people vote, not corporations.
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
There are legitimate ethical questions about patenting life forms, but I don't think that it's really so much of an intellectual-property issue. Patenting the genome of an existing organism sounds like it should be wrong, until you realize that mapping isn't obvious at all (as far as I know, since I'm just a computer programmer).
I also found the argument about open-source software having fewer bugs to be kind of lame. How many of you will be doing code-reviews on Wheat 2.0, even if the source code is under the GPL? (Besides, the "source" is arguably available anyway; the original is all written in assembly code anyway :)
Have you read my blog lately?
>> What happens when a bio-cracker unleashes a plant virus on all the wheat in North America...?
Probably a lot of poor people are going to die.
This actually might happen, we dont have vast ammounts of knowledge on this subject, we are just learning, but if something goes wrong nobody can predict the results. Genetics are great for mankind, but quite dangerous if misused
Check out Website development, maintenance and accesibility cons
this is also a sci-fi story. it poses some interesting ideas, but it doesn't make any attempt to appear like a news source, much less a credible one.
Should research that costs millions of dollars to do be given away for free?
bio-terrorism of this nature wouldn't be catacylismic. Yes, there'd be a bit of an adjustment period, but eventually the world food supply would even out, which is all the more reason to support free trade.
A computer virus that completely shut down entire computer systems acrossed the country would be much, much more chaotic. The percentage of our economy that depends on technology is astronomical, which is all the more reason to support open source.
The world needs a crop that can produce grain and tuber crop like potato and at the same time kill insects.
Let call it the potawheat.
This reminds me of a sig I saw on /. a while ago. It went something along the lines of, "Dear God, please open source the inner workings of the brain. -A.I. Researcher."
"There is no spoon." - The Matrix
This is so simple...
"Intellectual Property" is not real property. It's a set of rights granted by law that can be taken back by another law.
So, if some bio-hacker ever does release a wheat plauge with the intent of profiting on sales of Wheat 2.0, that plan can very easily be foiled simply by passing the Wheat Fraud Prevention Act of 20xx that voids the Wheat 2.0 patent. Problem solved.
I'll probably be REALLY desperate.
Well when they finish mapping the Human Genome if they get a patent I guess we will have to pay them royalties in order to continue living, or to have children.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
that's canola not corn in the monsanto case
Percy Schmeiser vs. Monsanto
By Percy Schmeiser
I've been farming since 1947 when I took over from my father. My wife and I are known on the Prairies as seed developers in canola and as seed savers. Hundreds of thousands of farmers save their seed from year to year.
I was also a member of the provincial legislature. I was on many agricultural committees, both on the provincial level and representing the province on the federal level. I was mayor of my community and a councillor for over 25 years. So, all my life I've worked for the betterment of farmers and rules, laws and regulations that would benefit them and make their farming operations viable.
The whole issue of GMOs can be divided into three main categories: the first category is the issue of the property rights of farmers versus the intellectual property rights of multinationals like Monsanto. The second issue is the health and danger to our food with the introduction of GMOs. The third issue is the environment.
Over this last year there have been other very important issues. The GM wheat issue, and what I think is one of the worst things: the pharmaceutical issue of GM plants producing prescription-type drugs, which I'll touch on later. I want to concentrate on the issue I'm involved with: Property rights of farmers vs. the intellectual property rights of multinationals.
In August 1998 I received a lawsuit document from Monsanto. Up to that time I never had anything to do with Monsanto's GM canola. I'd never bought their seed or gone to a Monsanto meeting. I didn't even know a Monsanto rep.
There were a number of items in the lawsuit. First of all, they said I had somehow acquired Monsanto's GM canola seed without a licence, planted it, grew it and therefore infringed on their patent. They went on to say that it was 80 or 90 percent contamination that I had in a roadside ditch and so on.
When we were sued my wife and I immediately realized that 50 years of research and development on our pure canola seed that was suitable and adaptable to certain conditions on the Prairies, climatic and soil conditions and especially diseases that we had in canola, could now be contaminated. We said to Monsanto at the time, "Look, if you have any of your GMOs in our pure canola seed you are liable for the destruction of our property and our pure seed." So, we stood up to them.
I think at that time there were two main issues. We lost 50 years of research and development and we felt that if farmers ever lose the right to use their own seed the future development of new seeds and plants suitable to their local climatic and soil conditions would be stopped. Those are the two main reasons we stood up to Monsanto.
It took two years of pre-trial and in those two years Monsanto withdrew all allegations that I had ever obtained seed illegally. They even went so far as to admit the allegations were false.
But, they still found that the fact that they had found some of Monsanto's GM canola plants in the ditch along my field, not even in the field, meant I violated the patent. So, it became a patent infringement case. I had no choice where it would be heard. Patent laws are federal, so it was before the federal court of Canada immediately, with one judge. It went to trial in June 2000 and lasted two and a half weeks.
That ruling is what brought my case to international attention. These are some of the main points:
1. It does not matter how Monsanto's GM canola or soybeans or any GM plant gets into a farmer's field. The judge went on to specify how this could happen: cross-pollination and direct seed movement. Believe me that's a primary cause - wind, birds and bees, because we have a lot of wind on the prairies.
The judge said it doesn't matter how it gets into a farmer's field, destroying or contaminating your crop, it all becomes Monsanto's property. You no longer own your crop. That's what startled people all over the world; how an organic or conventional farmer can lose a crop and
I get the option to use a superior shell or more advanced gui than the one built in.
#define CLUE 0
Murderous, rampaging plant life is generally best combatted with the strains of "Puberty Love".
Start a happiness pandemic
Unless you can stop plants from breeding, there is no way you could keep the code inside one plant. And since we eat the fruits of most of our food plants, we *need* them to breed. Well, at least the big three (wheat, corn, and soy).
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
In the posters example, I would imagine the corporation would 1. Sell the new wheat 2. Sell the DNA to other soulless multinational corporations who would grow more wheat, and 3. Profit. And we should all be thankfull that the corporation was around in the first place.
The blogger is misusing the term "open source". All patented works are open source, but still proprietary, not "free". Also the code of any organism can be read by performing PCR on its nuclear DNA. True, this is equivalent to assembly language, but it's currently the only language we have for genetics.
(Side topic: Whoever creates a high-level genetic language and compiler will either win the Nobel prize immediately, or be burned at the stake. Or both.)
The problem is abusive patents. The Schmeiser loss completely blew my mind. Canada has given carte blanche for Monsanto to (secretly) shoot their wad over the entire country, then charge royalties on every farmer. Patented food crops go way Way WAY across the line of human decency, but our wonderful nations of Freedom(tm) say it's a great business model.
Words fail me. I can't properly describe how insanely awful this is.
in the exciting world of the future, the RIAA will have rid the world of music file sharing, but something else will have risen to take it's place.
oh, what a battle it will be, the PSAA (porn studios association of america) versus the renegade pirates, who fight to keep the genetic information of their favourite 'actors' flowing freely.
mkay, that last bit sounded dirtier in print.
In fact, it'll make it worse! Everyone knows that all these "virus kiddies" spreading pinkeye in kindergarten couldn't have done it until the advent of DNA sequencing and the revelation of the Pinkeye Vulnerability (MS08-027). The best way to approach this problem is to avoid any sort of scientific inquiry into genetics altogether. Then germs won't happen.
This sounds like a bad Star Trek:TNG analogy...
If it happens, Q will save us.
A virus... that kills all the wheat in the US... hmm...
Curse you, Atkins! Curse youuuuuu!!
Their seed ended up on his land through no fault of his, yet they claim they have a right to be paid license fees or to force him to spend his time and money removing corn derived from their migrating seed.
This version of events was determined to be false by the trial court, and that decision was upheld by the Supreme Court. Instead they found that he had saved seed that he knew was Monsanto-patented, (genetically modified to resist Roundup herbicide) and planted it without paying them a license fee.
No damages were assessed, however, because the court found that he did not accrue any extra profit as a result of using the genetically modified canola seed as opposed to regular canola. The reason being that he didn't take advantage of the invention because he didn't use Roundup and therefore had no way of making extra profit based on the patented bits.
(Also, for what it's worth, the case concerned canola, not corn.)
Basically, the only way you can view the Schmeiser decision as unfairly pro-Monsanto is if you believe that genetic modifications should be inherently unpatentable. (Which is not necessarily a silly position--I'm not sure I don't think that.)
Or if you are ignorant of the true facts of the case.
2) Engineered sequences can be patented, but not the organism holding the engineered sequence.
3) Engineered sequences which escape into the natural population through natural reproductive means loose their patent, with a caveat, the former patent owner should be held responsible for all clean up cost, and may be subject to bio-terrorism charges for endangering a nations eco-system.
Just thinking outloud, sorry.
Wheat 2.0 has a virus?! Quick, eat Dietary Invigorating Corn Kernels 7! Completely man-made and open source! I hear the author's had some too!
Eat to live! Eat to live!
Until Slashdot fixes the funny modifier, use insightful or interesting. The poster knows your intentions.
Anything that reduces the effect of capitalism on the academic fields of biotech. The whole possession of knowledge thing and venture investment really twisted the ethics of the field, from industry right into the classroom.
If the proposed scenario really happened, then the US Congress would pass a law that either nullified the Wheat 2.0 patent or set the license fee to one cent. Remember that the the first priority of every elected offical is to be reelected.
Life is a sexually transmitted terminal disease. If it were Open Source, we could port it to Ninnle, and never have to worry again!
NO WARRANTY
11. Because this genetic material is licensed free of charge, there is no warranty for the genetic material, to the extent permitted by applicable law. Except when otherwise stated in writing the copyright holders and/or other parties provide the genetic material "as is" without warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied, including, but not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose. The entire risk as to the quality and performance of the genetic is with you. Should the genetic material prove defective, you assume the cost of all necessary servicing, repair or correction.
12. In no event unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing will any copyright holder, or any other party who may modify and/or redistribute the program as permitted above, be liable to you for damages, including any general, special, incidental or consequential damages arising out of the implantation or inability to implant the genetic material (including but not limited to loss of gentic offspring or genetic offspring being rendered inaccurate or losses sustained by you or third parties or a failure of the genetic material to interoperate with any other genetic material), even if such holder or other party has been advised of the possibility of such damages.
Wheat is already a virus! Zing! I'll be here all night folks.
And remember..if your drinking, don't drive; and if your driving...don't drink.
Why does this immediately remind me of a new brand of antivirus software that would appear to take advantage of (read as: extort) the same type of situation?
-- I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. It's not my fault that life sucks so much. --
"What happens when a bio-cracker unleashes a plant virus on all the wheat in North America, and the genetic code to 'Wheat 2.0' is closed-source, patented code owned by a corporation?
What happens is we all starve. End of life on earth, and all that is good and proper. The courts and the legisltatures will all toe the corparate line, and we're all fsck'ed.
[voice style="Paul Teutul"]Turn around so I can smack you on the back of your head, numbnuts![/]
I'm a bio student and Dr. David Suzuki, a noted geneticist and bio ethicist came to my university (Emory) last semester to deliver a speech about this very subject. He argued that genetic manipulation had enormous potential to do good for the world, but there was little chance that corporations would use it to do good (He says genetically modified food feeding the world's poor and hungry is a sham - we already make enough food for everyone on earth, the problem is distribution, through those selfsame corporations) and that genetic technology was simply moving too fast for people to both come to terms with it and regulate its widespread use.
We're seeing this in the crazy lawsuits and issues stemming from genetic engineering (companies forcing farmers to pay for genetically modified crops that accidently took hold on their land and the supposedly sterlie glolight danios aquarium fish [which arent sterile - indeed since they really are just zebra danios they should breed like mad]).
The further corporatization of science is not a good thing; yes the money does help new research get done, but none of the important sharing of information goes on. We've had open source in biology, through research and journals (Watson and Crick's use of many source to construct a model of DNA comes to mind immediately) and that kind of peer review will be very necessary in genetics.
"There is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter," Jeeves, (Jeeves and the Impending Doom)
Canola is the fancy name they switched to after marketing figured out why rape seed wasn't selling. (Except for China where they don't know what the word means.)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Since when did blogs become a credible news (much less academic) source?
C:\>
It would be a neat trick to design a fish that would be better designed than all the fish evolved over billions of years.
the badguys are more likely to find an unpatched weakness
More than likely, any "unpatched weaknesses" would prevent the plant from living. Genetics and coding shouldn't even be contrasted, let alone compared. It's like comparing Seedless Watermellons and Bus Stations.
I realize that it's incredibly unpopular on slashdot to come out in favor of practically any intellectual property, but this article was logically flawed. Yes, it makes sense that the genetic code(s) for apples should be public domain, or perhaps even shared by the few people willing/able to describe those codes, but to extend that logic and say that if someone CREATES a new code based on the old, let's say for an apple that cures cancer, is ridiculous. At the very least, if someone were nice enough to do so on their own dime (they'd have to if they didn't own the improvement - we'd all just steal it from them otherwise) then we should be nice enough to give that guy some help/money/services in exchange for his incredible contribution to life. If only we could count on everyone to do that, or if only there were some kind of sociological structure to accomplish the same goal. OHWAIT! There is - and it's called the public freaking market. By allowing (temporary) ownership of intellectual property such as this, we collectively incentivize innovation, via direct reward. I completely agree with shareadvocates that in some cases, specifically in environments where information is quickly and universally shared as a matter of course, that same level of innovation can probably be reached or even surpassed by many people making very minor, inexpensive innovations collectively. Hell, there are millions of programmers - it's not that exclusive a club. But in genetic engineering and manipulation, where the resources to contribute to the science are often incredibly expensive, more protection and incentive needs to be applied if any innovation can be expected.
What if "a stunt" like that would go "bad" in a madscientist way and whipe out mankind???
(have you got insurance?)
And if Erwos is American, think again about the voting.....
an old European.
a really really long line of real words to bypass junk character filtering in this message so that it comes out nicely
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I'll agree that there needs to be legal protection for non-GMO farmers who have crops that are cross-polinated by GMOs. This would be difficult to accomplish given the complications involved with proving that only cross-polination actually occurred(and that the victim non-GMO farmer wasn't actually pirating patented seeds). From a legal standpoint, it would be easiest to simply forbid the patenting of any organism(GMO or otherwise) which reproduces freely and sexually. In other words, this would allow firms to patent sterile or asexual organisms along with parts of organisms(vat-grown tissues, organs, etc).
As far as that Monsanto case goes, I find it rather unfortunate that the court's decision does not appear to be based on how the Roundup Ready canola plants got onto Schmeiser's property in the first place. That should have been the primary concern of the court.
Also, in regards to the rampant spread of GMOs into a wild environment, keep in mind that non-native species have been spreading for years, causing shifts in ecosystems all across the globe. Rats alone have caused enormous damage. We've also unleashed a few non-GMO hybrids, such as those lovely Africanized "killer" bees. Escaped GMOs will just add to the stew of organisms invading ecosystems worldwide, and I suspect that when they make their appearance on the scene, they'll have some stiff competition. If GMOs do have defects or liabilities(unknown or otherwse), they will very likely play a big role in their ability to spread. Never underestimate the ability of bacteria, viruses, parasites, etc to adapt to new prey in the wild. It won't take bio-crackers to engineer GMO-killing plagues. They'll emerge on their own.
A scenario akin to that which you mentioned in White Death could potentially occur using techniques more primitive than genetic engineering. Again, just take a look at Africanized bees.
As anyone with even a cursory familiarity with modern biology knows, nobody "writes" genes. We don't understand nearly enough about biochemistry to do this yet. The genetically modified organisms on the market today start from an unmodified genetic stock, then have genes from other strains or species spliced into them. Declaring that you own a gene merely because you were the first to commercially exploit it is patently ridiculous. It's as if I found a rock whilst hiking, then declared a patent on all sedimentary rock and began suing producers of concrete for selling a derivative work without paying royalties.
Anonymous Luddite: "What do you think of the dehumanizing effects of the Internet?"
Andy Grove: "Not Much."
So when you put a gene in any field, or this gene is created through mutation, this one is spread to other fields depending on the nature's interest in it. But here, instead of entertainment interets in a movie or music, nature keeps the genes that allow the crop to improve.
It is like if Fahrenheit911 did not find any distributer in the US, and it was put on bittorrent... Each clients want a copy, the fields are filled with patented crop, but who can you fight aqainst?
So, if Monsanto's gene was that terrific, it should be able to multiply freely across the "network", and none could stop it at an exponential reproduction rate, like a good movie on P2P. I think that, if they still have enough time to sue people, this gene won't survive in nature and is not so important.
For that matter, grandchildren would then be considered "derivative works", giving an exponentially increasing revenue source.
"They're not my kids, they're my IP portfolio."
Is that like Soylent Green?
What happens when a bio-cracker unleashes a plant virus on all the wheat in North America, and the genetic code to 'Wheat 2.0' is closed-source, patented code owned by a corporation? Should life be Open Source? Download Aborted takes a look at this issue."
I read about a woman that was buying genetically engineered cornfeed (not cracked, whole corn kernels) to feed to their animals. Later, she thought to plant the same corn; after the bumper crop, exclaimed that it was about %50 higher yield. The patent holders heard about her using their corn and sued her; she lost her cattle ranch. This was in MEXICO, mind you. One more reason to boycott all genetically engineered corn.
For those of you Bible-abiding people;
Genesis 1:11; "And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so."
Genesis 1:12; "And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good."
Genesis 1:28; "And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth."
Genesis 1:29; "And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat."
Bottom line: whatever God created, or whoever "God" turns out to be; it belongs to whomever claims it in God's name given that it is not stolen from someone else. If it was tampered by man, genetically manipulated as opposed to selective cross-breading, then it belongs to whomever manipulated it I suppose.
Going back to the woman rancher/farmer in Mexico, let me present the overall history of Corn. Corn was originally an ugly weed that grew. It had a small cobb with only a couple small kernels. The natives that lived at one is now presently America; the ones that nearly all but died from the Spanish and other Inquisition, selectively crossbred corn for larger cobbs and bigger kernels (not Linux, darn). Eventually, the plants' seeds appeared higher yield; polyploid, perhaps. And now, geneticists are taking native-bred full-length corn, modifying it despite it already having been modified in such a natural way as cross-breading over thousands of years; and the geneticists are claiming it as their corn outright.
That's theft! And as we all know about patents and copyrights; with prior art, voids the claim. Corn by its daily nature is the result of the work of thet native non-Americans (the non-inquistive, non-conformants; that were raped by Spain, neighborting tribes, and the United States durring the Civil War, et al)...
This is just a pothead conversation that somehow made it to the interweb.
"Dude, check this out," he says talking to his buddy over Roger Wilco. "What if, now stay with me, what if LIFE was open source?"
"You blew my fucking mind, man."
"Exactly."
I hereby share my unique genetic code with the rest of the world and am more than happy to give out free samples...especially to large-breasted 20-ish women. Now that that's out of the way... It seems to me that there's a middle ground to be walked. For example, it's ludicrous to think that Monsanto (or some other giant corporation) would be able to simply point to an apple tree and say "We're patenting that DNA". That's public domain and should fall under the laws pertaining to that sort of thing. On the other hand, should Monsanto (or some other giant corporation) splice together some apple DNA that's noticably different (maybe containing natural antibiotics to help fight stomach ulcers, for example, or drought/cold tolerance that far exceeds the norm) then Monsanto SHOULD receive a patent on that DNA...but it would be up to Monsanto (or some other giant corporation) to protect that patent by controlling the propagation of the DNA. If some honeybee cross-pollinates the super apple with the apple tree in my backyard and my fruit then contains some of Monsanto's patented characteristics that's Monsanto's problem, not mine, and should not be legally actionable. Notice that this also builds in some greed-driven checks on the spread of genetically-modified organisms...two birds in one stone. If we want to see a biotech future we need to understand that a good chunk of the R&D resources are concentrated in the corporate sector and that we'll need to find a way to both encourage and control development of these technologies.
Although the courts seem commercially biased, all farmers that grow non-mod'd crops have a basis for lawsuit due to the negligence of Monsanto (and other GMO companies) to control their product. They have, in fact, lowered the value of the farmer's infected crop and (if the farmer grows his own) future crop's seeds. Although in practice this position is absurd (cross-pollination happens regularly depending on land configuration and the wind patterns/strength) the current ruling leaves this argument open for usage (IMO).
...syphilis.
If the DNA is "open," which it is, then it's just as targetable (maybe more so) than a "closed" version. The only difference would be a bit of time to sequence the "closed" version.
Come on, people. This is stupid. The word "open" is such a political term now that it has no meaning. "Public Domain" used to be what "Open Source" is now, except there was no way to make money off of it.
Open DNA? Closed DNA? Just sequence the freaking thing and your "Closed DNA" is open - to you.
And in the case stated, if someone wiped out the wheat, there's nothing that could be done in a short amount of time. The problem isn't the wheat DNA is closed, it's isolating the DNA of the agent of attack and trying to figure out what (if anything) could be done, then dispersing the antidote (or whatever it would be called). Hello?
Will it make my bread unstable?
I'm not a lawyer or biologist, but it may be interesting to compare this issue to what's going on in the software industry. There are some clear similarities between genetic code (the blueprint for lifeforms) and software code (the instructions that define a computer program).
"I'm not a stoner or a druggie, but it may be interesting to compare this issue to what's going on in the medical industry. There are some clear similarities between medicine administration (the drugs that cure our common aches and pains) and hemp, cocaine, and crank (the drugs that put us in a ephoric state)."
Give me a break, anyone who has no knowledge of the fields they speak of usually doesn't understand the true issues at hand. This blog is near worthless, IMHO.
As it seems to me, life has been going on for thousands of years, and would be in the public domain by now.
=================
Unix is very user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are.
Alright, folks, if your genes were GPLed, then all the derrivative works from those genes have to be released to the public. There would be no one single "ownership" of those genes.
Consequentially, that means there is no obligation to wait until said product is 18yrs old before it reaches EOL with the current maintainer. Since the product is GPLed, it theoretically can be picked up and maintained by anyone and everyone that wishes to do so. If anyone should profit from publicly reselling the product, they are required to um...release the genetic material along with all the enhancements and alterations to the bastard's DNA.
I officially put my own genetic code under the terms of the LGPL. You can redistribute me and my clones as you like...
Funny post, but it brings up an interesting point. Biotech companies are patenting gene sequences all the time. What's to *stop* you, or me, or CowboyNeal from filing a patent for "A unique sequence of genetic material such that will produce a particular individual, to wit, me?"
Do the biotech companies know the exact sequence of GTCA's in the genes they patent? If not, then I don't see any reason a human individual couldn't patent his/her/hir own 46 chromosomes (+/-).
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
He saved the seed from his own fields. How was he supposed to seperate out the Roundup-ready contaminated stuff?
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
We don't need human kind to kill us all off. Mother Nature will do fine on its own given enough time. The fish fiction is just a small sample of natures own reality. Stateside we are trying our hardest to control an ever spreading population of Snake head fish. I love this quote in which we just close our eyes and pray it all goes away ...
"Experts fear the snakehead, with its voracious appetite, could destroy the river's ecosystem if left to breed unchecked. One fear is that the river's smallmouth bass population could be decimated.
"They're a top predator, the top of the food chain," Kauffman said. "We hope they disappear. We don't want to have to manage them." " Article Here
I wonder if you can make bread from fish?
No, the grandparent is a moron -- he doesn't even understand what he read.
Now, personally, I'm of the belief that if Schmeiser arrived at his particular seed crop genetics through natural selection (which appears to be the case from my cursory research) then he should be allowed to make use of that crop HE developed naturally. But it appears that the law's viewpoint is that he knowingly developed "Roundup" proof crops to specifically use Monsanto's "Roundup" herbicide without paying them a license fee. That's definitely a violation of existing patent law.
Pot is open source wheat....
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
What happens when a bio-cracker unleashes a plant virus on all the wheat in North America, and the genetic code to 'Wheat 2.0' is closed-source, patented code owned by a corporation? Should life be Open Source?
What, so Wheat 2.0's team of volunteer geneticists can rush out a quick patch? And would you like user-contributions to be in the form of digital sequences, or would you rather have us do a little quick PCR with the live stuff and ship you a test tube full of DNA?
Living organisms are open source already. Given the necessary hardware and the accompanying wads of cash, you can crack open any nucleus you want and sequence its chromosomes until the cows come home. Sure, it's uncommented, but it's not like Monsanto is sponsoring an annual obfuscated protein sequence contest, and if you're allergic to uncommented code, Open Source is definitely not your cup of tea.
If you're really concerned about engineered agricultural diseases, you might want to consider the solution that 3.8 billion years of evolution came up with: genetic diversity. If you don't have three midwestern states entirely covered with the same clones, it's going to be much, much harder to obliterate the whole crop.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
India *exports* basmati rice to the US.
My White Bun 3.0 which uses Wheat 2.0 is incompatible with my hamburger 3.0 that uses beef 2.8b.
Shucks, why can they not get proper version control on these things...
No, but you can filet them and eat their ... meat. Say it with me: MEAT! MEAT MEAT MEAT MEAT! MEEEAAAT!
meat
We can neither love nor pity nor forgive. If you make a slip in handling us you die!
That's the problem with patenting living things. You don't have to worry about patented self-sealing stembolts crawling into your parts bins from nextdoor and breeding like bunnies.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
What makes it worse is that (I'm guessing here) these genes were probably discovered with public funding of some sort. A similar thing happened a few years ago when the Staph aureus genome was decoded using a lot of NIH (i.e. taxpayer) money to pay for the research. The company then went out and patented it, to a great deal of uproar in the community. If you were paying attention, it also happened during the SARS scare, and I remember two companies were trying to figure out who was really the first to get to it, cuz the one in Toronto was going to essentially release it free to the world, and the other was a company that was going to patent it and make the world wait for their marketability research to figure out what name they should choose for the vaccine. Hopefully this stuff will be headed off soon, but the gov't is so hopelessly in the pharmaceutical companies pockets on this and everything else, I have little hope.
a clarification on why i don't think the host should be patentable,
DNA is data that can be read by any cell. Think of DNA like a language that runs on a VM. All cells have this VM, so by moving the sequence from a VM machine in the mosquito doesn't change the gene sequence or gene product when the sequence is run on the human VM.
An organism is just a collection of cells that hold VMs that run DNA code (where a gene is analogous to a program) and produce gene products. Even though the human cell never would hold a patented gene sequence under natural conditions, nothing about the gene or it's function has changed. It's still behaving the same as it does in it's natural host environment.
I do think there may be a usefulness to patent the application of naturally occuring genes to treat illness A thought pathway X, but not the actual DNA sequence.
DNA sequences should only be patented for new engineered sequences, and not 'discoveries' that were found occuring naturally in other organisms.
it MUST be...
our lives in the hand of big (US) corporations makes me really nervous.
so long
Seeing as he didn't use the Roundup, I fail to see what advantage he would have found in using the GMO seed, so I wonder why he actually would have chosen to use it instead of his own seed.
Did they actually present proof that he willfully and knowingly kept the seed *because* it was GMO Monsanto seed? The decision, as I read it, just says he kept his own seed and replanted it the next year, which is, duh, a common practice among farmers.
I'd need to see actually proof that he was willfully and knowingly using Monsanto's seed for some nefarious purpose. Otherwise, he's just replanting his own seed. It's not his fault it got contaminated; this is the problem that is eloquently put by his speech reproduced elsewhere on his thread.
Another way to view the the Schmeiser decision as unfairly pro-Monsanto: if I perform a behavior that is legal, that has been legal for years, and someone else interferes with my behavior in such a way that it somehow becomes no longer legal, shouldn't *they* be held accountable? And since they're the ones hurt by their own contamination, they shouldn't press charges against me.
If I drive to work every day at 45 miles per hour, and some jerk throws their kid in front of my car just as I'm passing by, I'm not guilty of manslaughter. On the other hand, if he throws the kid in front of the car, say, a hundred yards ahead and I slam on the accelerator then, uh, yeah, I should be held somewhat responsible. But again, sounds like the farmer wasn't willfully infringing on Monsanto's patent.
Actually, that's a lousy analogy. But part of the problem is that there is no real good comparison between old patents and new patents, and to use the same patent law to cover both kinds of patents seems a little silly to me. Corporations will be owning your offspring next.
Karma: Chevy Kavalierma.
I did not say to boycott corn in general.
I hopefully implied that if you or I want to keep any few rights, then boycott patented corn.
Perhaps I have some sympathy to this woman, BECAUSE SHE LOST HER FAMILY-SHARECROP RANCH because she ignorantly planted a seed that was patented.
My prior art comment is not an argument and it is not flawed until you prove it flawed. It depends upon whos law you choose to abide;
God's law: Though shalt; not Steal, not Kill, not curse God's name, Love your neighbor as your self, forgive your tresspassers that we may be forgiven,
Mexico/United States law: you lease property, you don't own property, we act in place of God thus we are God, do as we say and not as we do, you build our roads and nead our permition to use our roads, if we don't like you we send the IRS to harass you with our 1,001-attorney legion (ahhem), we grant you rights and you have no right to complain yet because your right to redress governance for grievance is granted and may thus be terminated, we terminate your citizenship at will and without reason other than reserved right to terminate, we are God.
The problem is that this GMO has defects and liabilities that are unknown,
One that is known, is that it is homogenous. If the topic of the article is about someone engineering a virus, bacteria or pest that would wipe out a nation's entire food crop, then at least the first two are made massively easier by having genetically identical crops.
Consider the Irish Potato famine. One blight that affected the few imported strains of potatoes on which the nation depended caused a famine. Few people in the modern Western world really understand what is meant by that word.
'Closed-Source' might be possible in a legal sense with food, but considering the companies want to grow it everywhere and sell it to everyone, it can hardly be secure through obscurity. So is it dangerous? YES!
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
This analogy is very misleading; with software, a worm that takes out half the net--say, blaster--causes temporary damage. Many people never even noticed blaster. In meatspace, a virus that took out all of the US's wheat would cause mass starvation and civil disorder.
In other words in software we have the luxury of assuming that failure is inevitable and planning out how to fix future failures; in meatspace you absolutely must prevent catastrophic failure or you might not get a second chance.
It's definitely true that we're not far from being in a world where a reasonably smart person can make a doomsday virus, and it's important to think about these issues beforehand, but I think this line of reasoning is misleading.
Not exactly. The court found that some of the seeds he was saving and planting (not at all an odd or unnatural activity for the farmer) contained monsanto's genes. They also decided that he "ought to have known" that the genes were in his saved seed. They did not rule that he did know and deliberately concealed it nor did they rule that he was fraudulately using it.
So his version of events, knowing the supreme court's decision does not fall. I would argue that the points he makes about cross-pollination are entirely valid whether you like him personally or not.
I mean what the hell is going on here? In my opinion, COPYRIGHTS for scientific information goes against the whole concept of science. Furthermore, there is no possible justification for the exclusive use of ANY scientific information or patents for any scientific discovery or engineering feat that accepts ANY public funding. I paid for that. I should be able to use it.
You heard me pharmacutical industry.
This idea that genes can somehow be patented is ludacrous. I'm fine with patenting a way to see the genes or a way to make the genes. I may not be able to see my own genes or the genes of a stalk of wheat. That doesn't mean they belong exclusively to you if you can. Even if you create a plant or animal entirely from scratch, the genes belong to that plant or animal first.
Hey Mr. Wheat Stalk, do you have any objections to the free distribution of your genetic code? Speak now, or forever hold your piece.
You should not be able to patent a concept or any generic product, but how can you defend patenting anything that exists in the wild.
Take an example of rubber. You can patent a machine that extracts the rubber from a tree, and I'm fine with that. You shoud not be able to patent the idea of extracting rubber from a tree. Now people think you should be able to patent the tree's rubber.
What are we coming to? Why are we allowing this to happen?
What he doesn't say is something that I found in following the link canadians.org to the information page on this issue, there you can find a link to the Judgement from May 21, it found that:
Sounds to me that they found it in a little more than that ditch as he claims. It's still an interesting read, and does raise some good questions. Like "who owns life"The grass is only greener, if you don't take care of your own lawn.
Should that be open-sourced too, so that everybody can make their own?
It would have been as simple as keeping seeds from less-contaminated areas. Like, for instance, the area of his crop furthest from the GM canola. Its not that complicated.
"That would seriously be a good way of making money."
I would like to propose that the word "effective" be substituted for the word "good".
Have you ever heard the expression "buyer beware?" She alone is responsible for her own actions. "Ignorance" is not a defence in the eyes of the law.
Somehow, however, I don't think you're here to discuss corn. You have a political anti-government message to push.
We can neither love nor pity nor forgive. If you make a slip in handling us you die!
Fortunately, I eat a low-carb diet.
As a bio-cracker I feel it my obligation to point out that we prefer the term Bio-Honkey.
So... He was supposed to destroy the seed from his own land and change the way he farmed because it had been contaminated by Monsanto's genes drifting in the breeze? Sounds like he has grounds for a damage suit.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
What your comment suggests is that this man should incur an extra expense every year of testing the seeds for cross polination, rather than go about farming as he always has.
How would you like to be forced by a Supreme Court ruling to pay to test the grass in your front yard because someone in the vicinity of 0-100 miles from your house created and patented their own grass.. a cross, ah, of Bluegrass, Kentucky Bluegrass, Featherbed Bent, and Northern California Sensemilia? You shouldn't be forced to incur that expense because some irresponsible person allowed their grass to be cross polinated or simply to be carried as seed in the belly of a bird, and neither should he.
Saying Android is a family of phones is akin to saying Linux is a family of PCs.
.. but you apparently failed to take "common sense". I suggest you visit some areas of the US south, were kudzu is literally burying things, despite enough spraying and mechanical removal leading to soil exposure and erosion to completely contaminate underground aquifers. You can NOT get rid of it unless you resort to truly garganutan efforts, literally declare chemical warfare on your area. Or go look at some lakes that have been decimated by carp, hardly a species left in them of the fishes that isn't carp. Now add in human intervention to make certain genes even MORE dominant than even nature and natural selection provides. Now add in their ability to go cross species, GM tech, and their complete willingness to do so, and their mindset of "to hell with the consequences as long as we might make some short term profit in it or get a research grant so we don't need to get a another job..". None of these people truly know the long term consequences, yet they release these products, and they WILL spread.
It's ignorant and uneducated smugness like yours in the scientific and corporate world that is GOING TO CAUSE some pretty bad effects in a few years time. I hope you remember your post when that happens. If you are aware of biology, have you heard of starlink corn yet? If you can't see the irony in reading his personal account, and others, about how canola that has been GM modified is now classed as a "superweed" and IS taking over all over the north, and exactly how it is affecting people and the economy, then you need to turn your degree back in. There is no excuse for this level of ignorance in a college graduate.
And it's not "just a threat" if it COMES TRUE. He got screed, shafted, cost him thousands, destroyed 50 years work. What do you mean "they can't do that" they JUST DID DO THAT. And they suceeded in scaring any number of other people off just with the threat of litigation. I call that legal extortion. Extortion = a threat to make you do something you wouldn't normally do because the other guy has something on you. In this case, it's the paid off corrupt system that has "something on" the farmers-either go along and be monsantos patsy and whore, and shutup about it, OR ELSE. That's extortion, no other word for it.
ok forgive me for being naive, or redundant
but if it doesnt matter how the genetic material got there, what is to stop corporations, competing farmers, drunk football players with no cows to tip, etc from just going around spreading seeds in peoples fields and tipping off the 'authorities'? to destroy random people?
sounds like a system begging to be exploited
they'll get bigger and bigger and then start killing humans. Just like the wheat obviouslly would.
If a stalk of wheat ever got the chance, it'd kill you and every one you care about!
(Troy McClure)
Not noteable, IMO a rubbish article.
The court found it likely that he specifically saved the seeds from a small area of his previous crops that proved extremely resistant to Roundup. >95% of his crop the next year was found to be Roundup-resistant. That's pretty unlikely to have been the result of him planting seeds from all parts of his land (previously planted with conventional canoloa) equally.
Nonetheless, he did not use Roundup and thereby take advantage of the GM seeds' properties, thus the court assessed no damages for his actions. They did rule that Monsanto can patent a genetic modification. That's the only real precedent of the case and the only real issue anyone can argue with IMO. Assuming you grant the patent, the fact that a hypothetical farmer who purposely harvested wind-blown GM seeds and took advantage of their properties without paying the patent owner would be liable for infringement seems unremarkable to me.
Dorothy, wake up!
Again, two problems with that:
1) The resulting crop was 95-98% Roundup-resistant canola. That could not have happened from the random reuse of seeds from a conventional canola field that happened to have some cross-pollination from the neighbors.
2) He wasn't found liable for damages!
it is plain to me that there really is merit to his story. HOW IN THE F*CK IS HE SUPPOSED TO REMOVE THE MONSANTO GENES YOU IDIOT??? If Monsanto wants to leverage a profit from the market-competative abilities of their modified produce, fine. But they simply cannot hold everybody else responsible for doing what they obviously couldn't do: contain their own crops. I'm so mad right now.
My only regret... is that I have... bonitis..
They'll just claim prior art.
You have the right to defend your property, but if they run away when you show up with your gun, you can't shoot them. You also can't shoot first if they're just stealing seeds. There has to be a threat to your life to justify shooting somebody.
I'm not taking sides, but there is definitely more than one side to this story.
This is the reply. Basically, they alledge that Percy stole the crop and planted it.
Imagine if terrorists get a hold of the code???
iWheat 0.45b - Wheat that eats people!! Noooo!!!
Handguns aren't illegal in canada.
Handgun registration has been required since 1934, with possession of handguns limited to collectors, target shooters and those who can demonstrate a need of guns to protect their lives
As far as i know, with a license, a person can carry a handgun but it must be visible (no concealed weapons).
The Neo-Bohemian Techno-Socialist
The 95-98% was determined to be a mis-statement by Monsanto. The highest he had was 8% in one of his six fields, the lowest was 0% (Percy Schmeiser's speech).
The problem with the ruling of the Canadian Supreme Court was that it left the door open for Monsanto to sue other farmers who were the victim of wreckless GM farming, allowing other fields to be cross polinated.
Saying Android is a family of phones is akin to saying Linux is a family of PCs.
Isn't a patent by definition open source? Maybe the patent holder has full rights to revenues, but in exchange for this right the patent holder must teach the public. What you do on your own lab bench or for your own personal use with this information is beyond the control of the patent holder. If you make money off of the patented technology, then that is a different story.
you deserve a +5 insightful :p
1) Get Wife pregnant.
2) Sue her for monetary damages for copying your DNA.
3) Profit!
Shit... doesn't even need to be *your* wife for this plan to work!
What do Monsanto's own studies say about what happens when you mix Roundup-ready grain with unmodified crops? What? They say they haven't done any? Why are they allowed to grow this stuff then? (Yeah, I'm being sarcastic.)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Is it wheat, or would it be Quadro-triticale?
A mis-statement huh?
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Although there may be other reasons to be wary of genetically modified organisms, the problem here isn't unique to GMOs. It arises in any situation in which the public good requires the release of proprietary information. This can happen with chemicals, and probably with various mechanical and electronic devices. For example, back in the 1960s my father, a neurologist, handled a case in which a farmer had been overcome by the fumes of a farm chemical (a pesticide, I think) and needed to know what was in it in order to treat him. The manufacturer refused to tell him, claiming that it was a trade secret. Fortunately, my father was able to get the state government to act. The attorney general called the president of the manufacturer and told him that if he didn't provide the information he would do everything in his power to make sure that that company never did business in the state again.
It depends on what you mean by "threatening". If they pull out their guns and start barking orders, that's probably going to be justifiable use. On the other hand, if they have their guns holstered and start barking orders... that's probably not. Grey areas like that go to trial.
Holding a person at gun-point until the police arrive is permissible but not recommended for the average citizen.
Congrats on having the most intelligent comment for this board!
Imagine if the RIAA released a worm that infected scazillions of computers, then started sharing music files with all the other infected machines. Then the RIAA sued everyone for the copyright violations that their own worm caused. Of course that would never happen, ha ha...
I guess farmers should be forced to put up real firewalls around their farms.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Yes, "buyer beware"
"Ignorance of the law is not a valid excuse." Delving into my dictionary, I notice that today's defenition of "ignorance" is unequal to that of my antique dictionary. The recent dictionaries defines "ignorance" as "not knowing" while my antique dictionary defines "ignorance" as " intentionaly avoiding knowledge." So, the bigger question is how this sits with the corporate courts in the presumably lost defenition.
"Ignorance of the law does not excuse misconduct in anyone, least of all in a sworn officer of the law." In re McCowan (1917), 177 C. 93, 170 P. 1100.
"All are presumed to know the law." San Francisco Gas Co. v. Brickwedel (1882), 62 C. 641; Dore v. Southern Pacific Co. (1912), 163 C. 182, 124 P. 817; People v. Flanagan (1924), 65 C.A. 268, 223 P. 1014; Lincoln v. Superior Court (1928), 95 C.A. 35, 271 P. 1107; San Francisco Realty Co. v. Linnard (1929), 98 C.A. 33, 276 P. 368.
"It is one of the fundamental maxims of the common law that ignorance of the excuses no one." Daniels v. Dean (1905), 2 C.A. 421, 84 P. 332.
Those three cites were of the States' court decisions. In God's law, we are taught to try to forgive one-another of tresspasses. I know you know this, it's good to provide as much supportive text in the post to present to others as well.
Yet, have you not ever heard of the term "accept for value [not the obligation]"? Researching the Uniform Commercial Code; one may actualy purchase property at reservation of rights, excluding all conditions of the purchase.
I apologise to you for my state of mind, as I may seem more fragrant than you in expressing my "political anti-government message..." But I leave you with the words of knowledge I have attained... A "government" is not a person, as is "Government." You are your own law enforcement officer until you grant someone else POWER-OF-ATTORNEY, or better yet POWER-OF-ATTORNEY-IN-FACT as I and many others favor above all to limit Government to be in fact and limited to fact.
Ecclesiastes 1:18; "For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow."
Ecclesiastes 7:2; "It is better to go to the house of mourning, than to go to the house of feasting: for that is the end of all men; and the living will lay it to his heart."
Ecclesiastes 7:4; "The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth."
John 16:20; "Verily, verily, I say unto you, That ye shall weep and lament, but the world shall rejoice: and ye shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy."
...area of his previous crops that proved extremely resistant to Roundup. ...he did not use Roundup...
How did he figure out if it was resistant to Roundup if he didn't use it?
Ewige Blumenkraft.
do a google search on monsanto. It's not hard to find out their primary product is Roundup Ready Canola. It's also not hard to figure out that Roundup Ready Canola is resistant to Roundup.
If you get sued by somebody, first thing you should do is try to figure out who they are and why they are suing you.
If you were even half-way searching you would have figured out that monsanto sell canola that is genetically modified to resist roundup within minutes.
Video meliora proboque deteriora sequor - Ovidius
Unfortunately the business model of closed source genetics promotes monocultures. As I commented in April's story Smart Breeding to Beat Biotechnology:
"the overall problem with current biotechnology is that it is proprietary / closed source / locked hood genetics. The applications might be wonderful, but the methodology and implementations leave a lot to be desired if you like open source science.
Just like with proprietary software, if you see some nifty new feature you'd like to add you your own application, you can't. In proprietary software you can't just buy the algorithm: you have to buy the whole package (and perhaps the support package and perhaps the computer to run it on). In much of current biotechnology you can't just buy the nifty new gene, you have to buy the whole potato (and you only get a limited choice of potato types if any choice at all) *and* you're just leasing the potato *and* you have to keep buying the upgrades each year. Smart Breeding, in contrast, is a close equivalent of open source software."
Ways in which Locked-hood genetics is like proprietary software:
Sounds strange, outlandish, fantasy... not really.
No, it really is strange, outlandish, and fantasy! Please re-enter reality...
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
it is a bit more complex than that. the farmer KNEW which corn was not his and KNEW that is was GMO corn that his neighbor planted, but rather than kiling it, he cultivated it in his feilds.
Where is the source of the 95%+ figure? In his statement, he had his fields tested by the University of Manitoba and the highest was 8%, some with none. 60% was in the ditch by the road.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
There is already a solution for this, it is called compulsory licensing. Government sets the price and tells the patent holder to issue licenses to anyone who wants one. Has been used for drug patents.
This has nothing to do with the environmental disaster caused.
Computer scientist, Software engineer.
Why is it unremarkable?
If someone gives me a vacuum with a patented widget in it, and I use that vacuum to clean my house, did I infringe on Vacuumcorp's patent?
You cannot patent _USE_. You patent _THINGS_.
Out of curiousity, what exactly is illegal about using someone else's GMO seeds? It's not like he's using whatever gene implanting process they used to create those seeds. It's not like he's manufacturing a product using that patent.
All-in-all, I'm hard pressed to find anything illegal about using patented seeds without a license.
It would be like me leaving thousands of barcode scanners at the side of the road in a bin marked "Free" and then suing everyone for using my patented laser. It makes no sense.
Wooh there pardner.
The court didn't find Schmeiser guilty just because he had seed on his land, they found him guilty because they said he used seed he knew(or should have known) contained the gene. In other words for the case in question it didn't end up on his land "through no fault of his". Had that actually been the case I'm sure they would have sided with him.
While there may have been real questions as to where the seed originated, if I remember correctly the court found he held on to the seed and planted it himself. In other words he used a patented product without the patent holder's say so.
Now don't get me wrong. I think the patenting of genes is ridiculous. You should be able to patent the process of getting the gene in to an organism but that's it. The actual gene or combination of them should be wide open. Patenting genes is a little too much like stumbling along gold and than claiming you invented it.
Now, as to the spread of "GMO's". On the question of whether a company would be liable for actual accidental spread the court was particularly mute since they found that this particular planting of it to not be accidental. However, if there is any sanity left in the world I suspect that absent legislation to counteract it, the courts would find for a farmer who could show damage due to the GMO if it accidentally spread to his crop. The thing is, if Schmeiser had sued Monsanto in the year he supposedly found the contamination we may very well be reading about a different outcome.
In other words, the thing for farmers to do now, is to document that they planted "clean" seed. Determine at the end of the year if any Monsanto seed is in their crop and if there is, they should sue for damages. The fact is, this case basically ensures they will win.
Sure information wants to be free, but how much are you willing to pay for the packaging?
I think I see the problem. It's possible for both statements to be true because they are measuring two different things. If very few plants are contaminated (8% max), but those that are, are 95-98% pure in Roundup-Ready genes...
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
I really can't believe the ethics of the pharmaceutical compnaies out there. They patent drugs as if they own them. Wrong. They might have developed a method of production which they *may* be able to say was a wholly new idea (doubtful). However, even if the chemical did not exist in nature, who can you patent a chemical. How can you claim that matter is yours. Unless you sat down and created each and every particle, making up new elemants and then chemicals, it isn't yours. Neither are bacteria you engineered to make chemicals for you. These mega-corparations the USA is spawning are getting frightening. Surely your government is supposed to do something about it. I mean I know you've got one of the most corrupt systems on earth, with pretty much every major elected politican on someones pay roll (forgive me, recieving campaign contributions from), but surely someone is gett ing spooked by this in the upper echelons of the US Govt. that would probably be too much to ask for, wouldn't it?
The truth shall always be free: Boris Floricic is Tron.
It was reported today in the L.A. Times that Chiron Corp. would relax its control over the 100+ genome patents for the virus hepatitus C. This was due to public outcry over the idea that they were slowing the development of new drugs to combat hepatitus C. Chiron Corp. announced that they "no longer demand that licensors pay upfront fees and make annual payments to obtain rights to the hepatitis C patents." There are "[a]bout 4 million Americans and 170 million people worldwide are infected with the hepatitis C virus, which can lead to severe liver damage." No government would allow a coroporation that operates within it's borders to keep its IP to obvious detriment of society if there is enough public outcry.
- Patent = a new solution to an old problem? Good patent.
- Patent = an old solution applied to a new problem? Possibly a bad / stupid patent.
But in the case of most of these life patents, they've patented an old solution to an old problem: there isn't any novelty there.They're patenting "method to find gene for making dragonfly wings as used by dragonflies in flying," which was only novel about, say 300 million years ago. Now if instead they were patenting "method for gene for making dragonfly wings added to tomatoes so they fly straight to the harvest box" that would be a new and original idea.
And in agricultural patents they've been able to patent genes / traits that were previously developed by groups of farmers. i.e. its like they're not only violating the GPL, but patenting the software they've borrowed.
Has anyone determined if this will effect the price of beer?
It's true no man is an island, but if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie 'em together, they make a good raft.
...then they should also have to open source Frosted Flakes, Cheerios and Fruit Loops.
The 95-98% pure figure, I believe, refers to the percentage of the gene match between the patented Canola and the "homegrown" variety found on the farm.
Wheat 2.0 won't be one strain but multiple. I mean think of wheat specificaly designed for the enviornment of each individual wheat feild or even different parts of a wheat feild...also how is this any different then traditional breading...like the patato famine in ireland. Genaticaly modified food are no more suseptable to this kind of attach then any other kind of food.
To claim that it is or to make directed claims specificaly at Geneticlay alltered food when traditional food is at the same or greater risk implies that the statents made in the article and by the slashot comintary are politicaly motivated...not substantiated in fact.
stendec@gmail.com
Yup, and he should have used those grounds.
Instead he ignored it and chose to use Monsanto's product, by doing so he lost those grounds(or has he? I'm not a lawyer so maybe he hasn't). The problem of course is that he has to prove contamination, something that I'm not sure he documented to the satisfaction of the court.
Sure information wants to be free, but how much are you willing to pay for the packaging?
Hey now, obviously you didn't do your research either. It's not a question of whether Schmeiser knew Round-up Ready Canola existed. The question was if Schmeiser didn't use Roundup how did he know his seed was resistant? The answer is, that according to him, in the previous year to the one in question he used Round-up on what he thought were simple offshoot's in the ditch of his "natural" crop. When he found the ditch canola to be RR resistant he tried a greater swatch of his land and found it to be RR resistant. He than apparently purposely cultivated this RR resistant strain, getting 98% the following year is one big coincidence.
Sure information wants to be free, but how much are you willing to pay for the packaging?
So farmers in the US can't tell the difference between a plant and non-consensual sex?
One example: trypanosomiasis- sleeping sickness. Infects 500,000/year, kills 100,000/year. And it drives you mad before you go into a coma and die. The older treatment Melarsoprol contains arsenic (and anti-freeze) and kills over 5% of patients taking it. It also feels like injecting bleach into the body. Another newer treatment (Eflornithine) works better and has far less severe side effects. It was used throughout the 90's as the best treatment. However, Eflornithine was only commercially manufactured as a potential cancer treatment-- once found to not work on cancer, there was no reason to continue making it, and Aventis ended production of eflornithine in 1999. As the last of the old stock ran out, patients had to go back to the dangerous and painful arsenic treatment.
Luckily for those 500,000 people per year, eflornithine was later found to have one important use: its a fine facial hair depilatory cream . So as the production of this drug was re-started to prevent the horror of unwanted facial hair, 500k people get the side-benefit of a non-arsenic treatment for a deadly disease. But only because eflornithine was found to treat excess hair, not because it prevents painful death.
This is just one anecdote- one illness. Because this is Slashdot, got to have some software analogies... they can be made. In the software world of closed source, Microsoft can discontinue support for a product, and people suffer from the time and money to upgrade. Or you can be the country of Iceland, volunteering to do all the work to make an Icelandic language verion of Windows 98, and Microsoft can just refuse you. In the biotech/med world of closed source, you can be 500,000 people not wanting to inject arsenic in their veins, and Aventis can still discontinue support for for your non-arsenic drug treatment.
It could be argued that eflornithine wouldn't have existed without closed-source drug development: but that doesn't seem to be the case here. First, while drug production is closed-source, basic research is at heart open-source. Sencond, Al Sjoerdsma, the scientist who first discovered its properties was apparently more of a Tim Berners-Lee type than a Gates or Darl McBride type. Other posters in here have pointed out how many patented drugs often are first found in university labs (taxpayer funded, open source methods) before disappearing into a licencing hole.
Well, rather than just take old Percy's word for it, how about going and reading the Supreme Court ruling itself, you can find it here,
m l/ 2004scc034.wpd.html
http://www.lexum.umontreal.ca/csc-scc/en/rec/ht
Note the fact that it is pointed out that they found 95-98% RR Canola in his crop and secondly that the Supreme Court indicates that he "actively cultivated" it and that this finding was in no way rebutted by old Percy.
So before we get all misty eyed over him, lets maybe take a look at what the facts were found to be.
Secondly, although it is called Round-up Ready the gene itself doesn't know the difference between Round-up and any other glyphosate based herbicide. So just because he didn't use RR for the year in question, maybe he used something else? Or maybe, just maybe he was hoping that when the patent runs out he would have some of this RR around and viable and would be able to sell it to whomever he pleased.
The ruling by the Supreme's clearly opens the door to any organic farmer to sue Monsanto's ass off for contamination. I can't believe people don't see that this is a good thing not a bad thing.
Sure information wants to be free, but how much are you willing to pay for the packaging?
So you expect all farmers to now stop planting what grows best without doing extensive genetic testing on it first to see if it's been patented somewhere, is that what I'm getting?
Guess what, if I'm growing tomatoes, and I happen to find that for some reason the strain on the left side grows better on the right, I'm going to try planting more of the seeds from the tomatoes on the left side next year. After all, it may be random mutation. Why is it my job to find out if it happens to be somebody else's patented pollen?
And if you come on to my land and try and take some of my tomatoes to go test, then unless you're a cop with a warrant, I'm going to have you charged with trespassing and theft. If some criminal steals your bike, that doesn't give you licsence to break into his house and take your bike back. You call the proper authorities.
That Jesus Christ guy is getting some terrible lag... it took him 3 days to respawn! -NJ CoolBreeze
It reminds me somewhat of trial by ordeal for a witch. In this case, all farmer can do is use Roundup to remove the non reistant crop.
Unfortunatly, this only serves to kill the innocent and to leave you with what you must burn.
The one you're referring to:
"Herbicide-tolerant plants with a purity grade of 95 to 98 percent in relation to the patent-protected characteristic had been found in large areas of Schmeiser's canola cultivation area"
As I just referenced from telling good patents from bad patents:
Patenting an old solution (yellow colored beans) to an old problem (how to make yellow colored beans)? Extaordinarily stupid patent. Similarly there is the patent for the bacterial BT gene put into plants. BT is an old (and open source / farming) solution to a problem (how to get a toxin to kill pest insects). The "new" problem was how to get plants to express that same gene / toxin. All they did was move an old algorithm into a new situation and they get a patent.Its as if Microsoft got a patent for GUIs simply by moving them from Xerox or Mac machines into IBM machines. Or in the case of the Neem or Yellow Bean patents, its like Microsoft got a patent on Babbage engines or Turing machines- simply because the original work had been done in other countries.
The courts & the prosecution probably tested it. Trust me, you didn't make some magic leap of logic that had escaped Monsanto lawyers.
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
I also find that there are two sides to the most important debates of our times. Often, one side is taken by citizens actining in the public interest, while the other side is taken by those acting in the interests of profit and personal gain.
Rick Roush is a hired gun for corporate interests.
While Shmeiser is a farmer, one time mayor of his community.
> Sounds a bit like the plot of White Death. In this book, the heroes must stop a megaconglomerate from seeding the seas with genetically engineered fish that will overrun all the native populations and then die, so the conglomerate can corner the market with their GMO farm-raised fish. Anyone wanting to raise fish will need to buy stock from them.
Sounds like typical silly Sci Fi nonsense, where a situation is taken to its logical extreme but all social factors are ignored. What government in the world would grant a corporation exclusive rights to genetic copyright after they had replaced an entire species? What population in the world would stand for this? Paranoia is often laughably naive.
... in fact it did for a long time in the middle ages when people like Di Vinci had to sneak around behind closed doors studying cadavers from fear of being excommunicated from the church.
Point being declare what ever you will and pass what ever laws you please, unless life becomes synthesized there is already plenty of knowledge about it floating around in scientific and medical journals. If that isn't enough all people need to do is steal a corpse or plant and study it behind closed doors like Leonardo did.
Dateline; 2006 - Ever since the bio-terror attack, it is illegal to use GMO without a license.
Wheat was bred by humans for thousands of generations to become the food we eat today. That breeding program produced the genome used by the latest engineers to tweak it the last little bit, then patenting the entire genome. Obviously they don't really have a right to own the genome, even if that property is currently protected by an ignorant, corporate American/international "justice" system.
Most effective medications are similarly derived from the work of thousands of generations of breeding by humans, rather than synthesized from scratch. "Patent" medicines, like the strong, addictive drug laudanum (opiate) and ever-popular aspirin (willow), were extracted from traditional plant remedies, and the purified ingredient patented. So the piracy of public domain genetics has a long history in Euramerican medicine. But now these patented genetics are edging out the traditional uses of the plants. And the entire system is in danger of collapsing under its own unsustainable weight.
--
make install -not war
One upcoming example: BT. BT is a bacteria / toxin used by organic farmers for decades to kill certain insect pests. At the previous rate of use- as a spray- there was a very, very low probability of insects developing resistance. Decades of use hadn't produced it. BT has now been spliced into crop plants: Monsanto got a patent simply for moving the gene from the bacteria to plants. (Its like Microsoft getting a patent for GUIs just by porting them from Macs to PCs-- not by writing new code, just a port. I don't think simply moving a gene from place to place meets the new and original requirements of patents. Taking "a method for killing insects via a gene that produces a toxin" and simply moving it from bacteria to corn really isn't unobvious)
The widespread planting of monocultures of BT crops means BT resistance is increasingly likely. As this happens the non-organic farmers can move onto other pesticides. But the organic farmers whose old standard- BT sprays- became useless have no backup. There was no system set up to compensate these farmers from their soon to be broken standard. Nor was there any "royalty" paid to these farmers who'd discovered BT in the first place.
BT resistance so far has been limited, because of BT's complexity, strict regulation, and additional pesticide use when outbreaks happen. But all it will take is planting in a non-regulated country- a place without enforcement for either of the manditory 20% nonBT plants or the use of secondary pesticides- and BT resistance could- and based on history, will- quickly show up.
With this many double negatives, and obscured message, you're either a lawyer or a coder.
-PHiZ
Pretend I said something meaningful or insightful here.
Isn't it ironic that Monsanto (and others) are trying to control the natural function of life (to multiply) with a EULA?
/. who sees the absurdity of trying to legislate a biologic process?
Am I the only person on
Is the equivalent of passing a law that gravity can't be used to help in the commission of a crime. Ridiculous.
This is frightening like the thought of installing linux is to someone who only know windows.
In other words, more paranoid BS.
First, the U.S. government keeps a store of reserve grains of every variety. Along with the reserved wheat, other reservs will be used to suppliment. The following growing season, there will be a "roll back" to the unpatched wheat. This wheat is also kept in stores by the U.S. and Major Ag. Universities.
A real life example was the rice blight in China. Yes, a lot of Chinese died but the U.S. saved the day by having enough stock of "unpatched" rice to fill their fields the following season.
The difference is, no more people will starve in the U.S. if such a thing occurs. People in the countries that the U.S. donates the expired surplus grains too(like Russia, other former communist countries, and third world countries).
People who bought futures at the right time will make big money on a wheat blight.
A 300 level ag econ class will teach you all of this, if your interested.
"the genetic code to 'Wheat 2.0' is closed-source, patented code owned by a corporation?"
Here is one more obviouse flaw to the story....how and when are patents ever closed source???? If they are patented then they are described at the patent office. In fact all patents are open source. You get a copy from the patent office and anyone can do it.
In fact this would mean that wheat 1.0 is less safe becouse a copy of the genetic code is not readily available.
Who ever wrote this article demenstartes very well there complete lack of knowlages not only in genetics but the basics of patent law.
stendec@gmail.com
This metaphor is seriously flawed. In a working biological system DNA can't be hidden, obscured, enciphered or otherwise made unreadable. The DNA which was modified is right there for everyone to see. In software, it is extraordinarily difficult to take a working program and reverse engineer the source. Even if a company owns some genetic code, it's still accessible to any genetic researcher.
Within the next 15 years, it will become trivial to quickly determine the base pair code of any strand of DNA, and comparisons between related species will be fast and easy. This idea that a defect with "wheat 2.0" is the same as Windows bugs is silly. Academic researchers can and will test patented DNA and improve it.
Their seed ended up on his land through no fault of his, yet they claim they have a right to be paid license fees or to force him to spend his time and money removing corn derived from their migrating seed.
So, what you're saying is that I need to produce some spyware, get it installed on 50 million computers, then start mailing invoices?
baaaa
Social media and technology thoughts: http://jasonkinner.wordpress.com
Interesting post, but a whole bunch of issues are confused, especially regarding patents:
1) in order to have a patent issued, you have to fully disclose your invention in such a way that a person 'skilled in the art' could duplicate it. That blows your virus theory to bits. Having the patent issued and published means anyone in the biotech industry could download a copy of it and work on an anti-virus.
2) patents do not put a stop to innovation, they *encourage* it. If you can make a non-obvious improvement to a patent based upon what it discloses, that constitutes a patentable invention in itself. The farmers or whoever can therefore read Monsanto's patents and improve upon them if that is their fancy.
The 'closed source versus open source' analogy is therefore completely flawed. Patents are all about disclosure, this is the tradeoff someone has to accept in order to 'own' an invention. This was the very idea behind the creation of the US patent office.
People really have to give up this 'patents are bad' attitude and start looking at the facts.
That being said, I agree that it's not at all clear that things such as software algorithms and genetic code should be ownable - whether the mechanism for ownership is a patent, a copyright or otherwise - as it now appears to be the case.
That is what the debate should be about.
Like most Americans, they have a poor grasp of the language. C'est la vie, I guess.
Note, this doesn't mean that copyrights would no longer exist, etc., but it does mean that all intellectual property rights would permanently expire, say, five years after applied for. This includes patents and copyrights. I guess it makes sense for trademarks to last as long as the entity that creates them exists. Oooooooooooooooh well.
If I buy seed, plant it, harvest it, plant again, harvest, and sell it, who owns the seed. The person I sell it to of course! There is NOTHING patentable about growing a crop! The process has been around a long time. True there has been some innovation (like using big machines), but these have nothing to do with this case. He didn't DO anything wrong in growing the crop. In fact, if anything, the seeds themselves violated patent law by reproducing without legal permission. Sound ridiculous, I think so too; but it's the truth.
It doesn't matter how he obtained the seed, as long as he obtained them legally from someone who legally owned them. Monsanto could be five parties up the chain and I wouldn't care, as long as each purchase was done legally. Yet they didn't argue (to the best of my knowledge) that he obtained the seed illegally, just that he didn't pay them for permission.
Imagine: "A method for producing seed resistant to [chemical name] out of seed of the same type also resistant". Yeah, that's a clever patent.
The only thing their patent should extend to is their laboratory method of genetic modification. Anything beyond that is loony (in patent terms anyway).
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
wreckless GM farming
"reckless".
Here look. Open source genomes. Imagine that. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi The servers run *nix as well. Everyone happy now? Take a look around, but please try and not /. this site, many of us rely on the ncbi for much of our daily research work. Using *nix. With open source utilities.
Did I mention *nix ?
merely cleaning the scum out of the gene pool.
If you don't think that small town Saskatchewan mayor's can make up stories than you've never been to Saskatchewan.
Now that aside, I read the parent's link and the only thing that seemed out of place was the clear attempt to avoid the issue of GMO crops infecting non-GMO crops. For instance, just because the nearest neighbor's farm was 8 Kms away doesn't mean Schmeiser's crop wasn't initially infected by RR Canola. Roush doesn't outright deny it could happen he just implies the distance is too great. However, given the detail of his other facts it seems relevant that he didn't indicate how far Canola pollen can travel.
Otherwise his facts don't seem out of place, and in fact the courts did find that Schmeiser deliberately cultivated Round-up Ready Canola and subsequently used it illegally.
So, one possible mouth piece doesn't outright deny a single possible problem while the other is clearly making up stories, enjoying the limelight and denying any wrong doing.
In my experience people "acting in the public interest" aren't. They are acting in their own interests just as much as a corporation and neither side is above using falsehoods and intimidation to get their way.
For the record, for all the "most important debates of our times" I find that I am never on the side of those supposedly acting "in the public's interest"(e.g. I'm for nuclear power, against the Kyoto agreement, I'm for globalization etc. etc. etc.). Since I'm part of this public I can categorically deny that these groups are acting in my interests.
Sure information wants to be free, but how much are you willing to pay for the packaging?
Don't be silly, that is what the killer attack-tomatoes are for.
Nothing can go wrong!
So, Monsanto contaminates his field and he is supposed to go through extra work and resuce the amount of seed available to him? Why?
If I dump some trash in your yard, are you then obligated not to use those parts of your yard that I dumped the trash on because you would be touching my property (the trash)? What should happen is that I become liable for the harm I have caused you, not that you are further inconvenienced.
His only mistake was that he didn't sue Monsanto as soon as he found out about the contamination. But it's an understandable mistake: anybody sane would be reluctant to take on a company like Monsanto in court.
Also, I think the court acted formally according to patent law. The decision may have been right legally, but not just. What really needs to happen is that the laws change and explicitly place the burden of limiting the spread of patented organisms on the patent holder.
Seed from Monsanto's plants isn't even supposed to be viable. Not only did they cause this guy harm, not only could he reasonably assume that Monsanto's seeds would not reproduce, the whole thing shows how poorly Monsanto's genetic engineering is actually working.
So he deliberately picked Roundup resistant seed? How could he tell it apart--even Montesano needs to "dunk the witch".
If your patented creation walks over to me I feel I've got a right to use it, unlike if I have to go out of my way to create it. If your patented creation blows onto my land and I can't get rid of it, I think it's an open and shut case.
Perhaps some ancient judge doesn't, but if not, only because they haven't considered the implications. Every patent discussion on slashdot has a "I'll patent air and sue everyone" post but this is getting closer to reality.
The courts ruled that the farmer knew he was planting GM seed. Well of course he knew - his crop had been contaminated, what's he supposed to do, go out of his way to make sure he only saves seed from the least contaminated crop? Hell, if all the rest of his fields were contaminated I'm sure a lawyer could show that he knew there was a good chance that the "clean" fields had a low level of contamination too. What could he do?
It's ridiculous, but we're in the middle of a very... bribe-friendly... political time, in which there are insane developments in IP laws. They'll be reversed eventually - not because I believe in the inherent justice in the system, but because other big corporations with tons of "campaign contributions" are going to start being inconvenienced by stupid overly broad fences erected by judges whose idea of technology is a color television.
I should perhaps make my point a bit clearer., when talking about people acting "in the public interest".
When a person, of their own accord argues for or against a topical issue, their sincerity can assessed, regardlless of the merit of their arguments.
A large firm, with a colourful background such as Monsanto, can not automatically be assessed to be pushing their case in the best possible faith.
Note - I'm not insisting that all large companies are by definition satanic.
But the mandate of the BOD must be taken into account.
They are not acting as saviours of the free world, or guardians of the environment.
They want to make money.
And, with all factors taken into consideration, fair anough.
Most activists, fighting for say, corporate responsibility, disarmament, safe food, whatever, can be considered more safely to be acting in good faith.
No matter what one thinks of the merits of their arguments, their motivation is transparent.
They are acting for, what is their sincere opinion, the interests of humanity. In the massive majority of cases, they stand to make no profit.
In reference to your assumption that they are acting in "their own interests, it should be noted that activists movements that have significantly changed societies have been manned by individuals who have seen no benefit from their victories. And often much sufferring.
Consider, the abolition of slavery, the battle for the rights of workers at the dawn of industrialism.
Both of which were opposed by the multinational corps of the day, as not being in the public interest.
I conject that it is safer to assume that sincerity of the activists than the good faith of the large companies who stand to gain much profit in opposition to such activists.
Why would any sane person think that life should be GPL'd ?
#include STDbasecode #include human.h set type=.........
I would agree with that, and being a MegaCorp, Inc. hater myself, I imagine it was a bit of a ploy by Monsanto to gain points in the "media trial" early on.
Mis-statement... can you tell I spent a good part of my career working for MegaCorp, Inc?
Saying Android is a family of phones is akin to saying Linux is a family of PCs.
Given that they polluted his land, preventing him from legally saving seed and continuing his business, I would regard any decision which did not grant damages to the farmer as unfair.
With a question like that what sort of answer do you expect?
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
"Ooh, I didn't even use Round-up, so I'm innocent," yeah, more like a dumb-ass.
-ed
ACHTUNG! Das computermachine ist nicht fuer gefingerpoken und mittengrabben. Ist nicht fuer gewerken bei das dumpkopfen.
What happens when a bio-cracker unleashes a plant virus on all the wheat in North America, and the genetic code to 'Wheat 2.0' is closed-source, patented code owned by a corporation? Should life be Open Source?
First of all, there is no such thing as "closed source patented code." Patent requires disclosure, and patented code is a matter of public record. Indeed, one of the goals of patent law is to encourage disclosure (as opposed to trade secrets). Moreover, the genetic code is more like an object code, which anybody can determine for any program simply by reading the raw code out of memory or off a disk. The translation from nucleic acids to amino acids is trivial. Moreover, modern PCR and sequencing technology makes it very easy to read off the genetic code of any protein. There isn't really anything analogous to source code--perhaps detailed 3D protein structure is the closest you can get.
But, the point is, who cares? Quite simply, if your patented invention blows into my field why should I not be able to use it? Seems to be one of the drawbacks of patenting life; it spreads on its own without contracts.
As long as he didn't obtain the seed illegally there should be nothing Monsanto could do to stop him - that there is, is a serious failing of the court system.
As far as the Supreme Court of Canada is concerned it isn't a question of how you obtained the patented product it's about how you used it. The word "use" plays a very important role in their decision as patent law in Canada confers a temporary monopoly on the patent holder for the "use" or exploitation of the patent.
m l/ 2004scc034.wpd.html
Here's a link to the court decision,
http://www.lexum.umontreal.ca/csc-scc/en/rec/ht
And here's an important bit,
"The plain meaning of the word "use" or "exploiter" denotes utilization with a view to production or advantage. The purpose of s. 42 is to define the exclusive rights granted to the patent holder. The question in determining whether a defendant has "used" a patented invention is whether the defendant's activity deprived the inventor in whole or in part, directly or indirectly, of full enjoyment of the monopoly conferred by law."
The decision than goes in to some length explaining how "use" is important and what may constitute "use". The court found that by spraying with Round-up in 1996, cultivating the seeds of the resultant Round-up resistant crop, having them cleaned in 1998, planting them and maturing them, that Schmeiser "used" the invention. But not only this they even go in to how he could have avoided this presumption of use. All he had to do is to show that he actively attempted NOT to use the seed. In other words, he should have contacted Monsanto, told them he had found RR canola on his pristine field and that he wants them to do something about it(at Monsanto's expense). He could than have even offered to let Monsanto test his seed at the end of the year(again at their expense).
The point is that this farm is a commercial interest, not a subsistence farm where the plants are for their personal use(which would have been legal by the way). Because the farm is a commercial interest they must act like one.
As to "accidental" contamination, the court even addressed that. Turns out there's case law although it regards a machine with a patented part that the purchaser of the machine had no use for. So the company purchasing the unpatented machine simply made no use of the patented part and thus weren't infringing.
There's plenty more, and quite frankly I think the reasoning is impeccable, those are some smart judges. I still don't believe you should be able to patent genes. But given the current state of the law, the judges did an incredible job.
Sure information wants to be free, but how much are you willing to pay for the packaging?
The precedent you mention is so unrelated as to be useless. This isn't an issue of a farmer getting something he didn't ask for and simply not using it, this is a case of the farmer not being able to use his pre-existing supplies.
A much closer analogy would be a computer virus which replaced the floating-point code in Excel with a patented algorithm. Now imagine that the virus was written by the owners of the patent. Would you be expected to stop using Excel once you were informed of its newly patent-encumbered state?
Perhaps patent law does suggest this, but that's insane. What is a supreme court for other than to correct legal errors like this?
The *one* reservation I have here is in the farmer's intentional cultivation of the special variety of seed before normal reuse, but it seems that if your patented invention hands itself to people, in the normal course of its lifecycle, that you shouldn't expect to make them liable for that.
First off, Schmeiser was able to use his pre-existing supplies. He had only 6 of at least 1050 acres contaminated. So he had plenty of clean crop around to take seed from. But even if his whole crop was contaminated, his proper response was to contact Monsanto to take care of it, which in such a case would mean to pay damages including supplying him with new clean seed. If they refused he would have to sue them. Sure that doesn't seem fair, but if all business was fair there would be no need for the courts. So instead of taking proper action Schmeiser tried to get away with patent infringement and got caught.
Secondly your Excel example is more akin to the hardware precedent since the patent encumbered algorithm can be replaced. Note, that you wouldn't be expected to stop using Excel, but you would be expected to disinfect it or if that fails you would need to reinstall. The point is that it doesn't matter how you received a patent encumbered product you can't use it in a commercial enterprise.
As well, if you could prove the virus was written by the patent holder than you've got one hell of a law suit. Which is exactly what Schmeiser should have done, or at the very least he should have asked Monsanto to take care of the problem. The lawsuit would only be necessary if they refused. Given the reasoning in his actual lawsuit the likelihood is that he would have won. This does not mean that he could use the seed in the manner he did.
Lastly Schmeiser wasn't found liable simply because his crop was infected. Had he acted properly than Monsanto would have been liable for infecting his land. Instead he was found liable because he actively worked to use the patent. It is clear from the case that Monsanto owns the gene in question and is therefore very likely liable for damage caused by that gene just as any patent holder would be liable for damage caused by their patent. But since that's not what the case was about the court couldn't find Monsanto liable for anything. That's a completely different case, one that Schmeiser should have engaged in when he found the contamination.
Sure information wants to be free, but how much are you willing to pay for the packaging?
How is he supposed to have known the seed were RR? If he didn't use roundup to kill his crops, how is he supposed to know?
Are you a farmer? Do you know anything about farming? Show us your credentials and give us reason why, as a farmer of 50 years, 'he had to have known'. If you can show reasonable data to back it up, you will have gained a supporter to your view, but my experience as a farmer taught me that one plant in a crop looks broadly similar to another and when you have a whole field of them which, incidentally, you are not wandering around the middle of for the sheer sake of it, you are hardly likely to know anything is different. Unless the plants grew eyes and fangs and snagged samml passing aircraft, or the seeds would grow legs and devour small rodents its not so likely he would have noticed.
Before you make the argument that the onsanto investigators could tell the difference, I say 'So What'.
They would be far more familiar with the plants, that being their whole purpose in life. Where the farmer has to spend his time of thousands of other tasks in his daily work, the monsanto expert has studing the plants as his whole job. He may also have more advanced tools for sampling that can test for a gene or enzyme though this is speculation since I have never read anything on how initial identifcation was done other that the act of criminal damage commited by dropping chemicals onto crops, potentially destroying them and definately contaminating the crop and the farmland.
As regards his reusing the seed. He claims, and there is no evidence against it, that the crop was contaminated by outside means. How is he supposed to make an income? Is he supposed to throw away his crop and 50 years of work? Possibly his farm along with it? Why should he? He didn't choose to use the geneline. He didn't introduce it to the wild. He didn't ignore the risk to third parties and introduce a crop that has no cross contamination safeguards. There is no evidence to say he is not completely innocent, though there is plenty to suggest that Monsanto's intentions and actions are less than honourable.
He has a right to reuse his seed line. It is this action and right that has kept us fed for 10000+ years and allowed our 'civilisation' to thrive.
> The point is that it doesn't matter how you received a patent encumbered product you can't use it in a commercial enterprise.
This is the ridiculous part. You'd be expected to go out of your way to avoid using the patent-encumbered product, despite it forcing itself on you.
> As well, if you could prove the virus was written by the patent holder than you've got one hell of a law suit.
Yeah, then you stop using a product you depend on until you can prove the guilt of a multi-billion dollar corporation and force them to pay to fix it. Where does the money come from to pursue this?
Patent law is simply broken. It ignores issues of independent discovery, pushes the burden of fighting an invalid patent onto the victims, and is being extended (As if Canada could ever say no to the USA) to cover facts of nature. (Mathematical formulas, etc.)
I'm sure Monsanto is 100%, according to patent law, but the law is so ridiculous as to be useless. For every company it helps it lets two Rambus/Monsanto companies who didn't actually invent anything inflict ruinous judgements on companies that actually do create things.
"This is the ridiculous part. You'd be expected to go out of your way to avoid using the patent-encumbered product, despite it forcing itself on you."
While it may seem ridiculous that is indeed the case, but it doesn't just apply to genes it applies to mechanical parts as well so it's not like the court is unfairly applying the law to a "new" area.
"Yeah, then you stop using a product you depend on until you can prove the guilt of a multi-billion dollar corporation and force them to pay to fix it. Where does the money come from to pursue this?"
As I pointed out in my last reply, you don't need to stop using the whole of the product, just the part that is patent encumbered. Of course, the question of the ability of the user to remove the part was left unaddressed by the court. This is the part that really makes this different, you can't just remove the gene, unlike the virus you mentioned, or the piece of hardware in one of the precedents used by the court(note that the case didn't hinge on this precedent it was just used as an example of a step a company could take to distance themselves from "use"). So I suspect, that future lawsuits will have to address this issue.
As well, any case against a virus writer would not just be civil but also criminal. So the costs would likely be covered mostly by the state. Even if not I'm sure there are plenty of lawyers that would take such a case on a contingency basis. Note however, that nobody has suggested that Monsanto planted the seed on Schmeiser's land on purpose. It was "accidental" contamination, even so the Schmeiser case seems to suggest that Monsanto is the complete owner of the gene and should therefore be liable for damages caused by their patent. All it takes is one case to set the precedent. I'm fairly sure that there must be a lawyer somewhere that would take this on a class-action suit basis.
As for the broken nature of what can be patented(different from all of patent law which isn't likely all broken), I happen to agree with you. The only thing I'm defending here is the logic behind the decision and the fact that the court had no basis to overturn a patent that the government has granted.
I happen to believe that the process of getting the gene in to non-GMO seeds can be patented but not the gene itself. But than again we allow companies to just throw chemicals together until they come up with something useful and patent that(pharmaceuticals) so this isn't without precedent.
But than again Schmeiser had the chance to completely change the nature of the way we view GMO's. He could have set out to make Monsanto responsible for their patent, he didn't do this. Someday I'm hoping someone will. Maybe than the Monsanto's of the world won't be so quick to patent these genes that they have no ultimate control over.
Sure information wants to be free, but how much are you willing to pay for the packaging?
no, he was supposed to save the non-contaminated seed, and process the contaminated seed. Not a very complicated solution.
While it may seem ridiculous that is indeed the case, but it doesn't just apply to genes it applies to mechanical parts as well so it's not like the court is unfairly applying the law to a "new" area.
Applying a law to a new area where the old assumptions don't make sense is unfairly applying the law. If machine parts mated and your drill press could "infect" your table saw with patented mechanisms, you'd be able to draw better parallels.
That is *the* issue that this hinges on. If the patent-encumbered thing infects a non-encumbered thing, is it in any way the responsibility of the owner of the non-encumbered thing? The *only* fair answer to this is a resounding "No!"
As I pointed out in my last reply, you don't need to stop using the whole of the product, just the part that is patent encumbered.
And it's your responsibility to inspect your materials and your parts to make sure that they haven't been patent-encumbered overnight? Bullshit.
The only thing I'm defending here is the logic behind the decision and the fact that the court had no basis to overturn a patent that the government has granted.
The court doesn't need to say that the patent is invalid, just that it couldn't be enforced in such situations.
It's the responsibility of the court to interpret law in a way that makes sense. Perhaps through an overly strict interpretation of various laws I accuse you of murdering a donut. When this gets to court it's the responsibility of the judge to toss the case out. If I sneak into your house and put an extra gig of memory into your computer the judge is supposed to throw out a theft charge, and a civil charge for damages. Perhaps you couldn't keep the ram at the end of this, but you certainly wouldn't be liable for *anything*.
The court is seriously wrong on this.
"That is *the* issue that this hinges on. If the patent-encumbered thing infects a non-encumbered thing, is it in any way the responsibility of the owner of the non-encumbered thing? The *only* fair answer to this is a resounding "No!""
O.k. let me see if I can't show just how "unfair" this really is. This argument only hinges on that we allow genes to be patented, again I personally don't agree they should be but that's not what I'm arguing here. Not allowing genes to be patented is a legislative NOT a judicial function. The judges must only apply the law as it is, not as you/we would like it to be.
So, now presuming that we allow genes to be patented then the only reasonable meaning of this is that the patent holder has the exclusive right to license that patent for use. Next, in no other areas of patents is it up to the patent holder to prove you obtained a patented product illegally, it is up to you to prove you have a license to use it. Easy enough to do by just producing a piece of paper. If it was up to the patent holder to prove you obtained a product illegally, chaos would ensue as companies come in and out of business whose sole purpose it is to produce a product illegally but sell it to a third party "legally". Sure you can sue the first company, but what's the point as you've lost control of your patent. The third company basically just shrugs their shoulders and says, "hey were victims too", and automatically gets to use the patent.
Now, assuming you agree that applying the patent law as above in other "real" patent cases is legitimate, why should it be different with genes? Your argument is that this is because the genes effectively self-replicate and are "guaranteed" to contaminate non-patented genes. Except, that in any given case it can't be PROVEN that this happened. All that has been shown by Schmeiser is that the pattern of contamination in 1996 was consistant with volunteerism, "consistant" and "proven" are two totally different things. But if we lower the standard of proof to consistancy only, than there is absolutely no reason to patent genes in the first place since all anyone needs to do is contaminate their own land in a manner "consistant" with volunteerism and the patent would be invalidated. The court effectively said, "well that's ludicrous, but if we apply the law as we do in other cases then we come up with a consistant and legitimate decision".
In other words, the court said, "if the burden of proof is on the patent holder there is no point in patents since the proof is almost impossible to get". They applied that principle in all other cases, and it is a legitimate argument here.
If the patent couldn't be enforced in such situations, then there is no point in the patents, and ipso-facto the patent is invalid!
Now the really interesting thing about this "consistancy" argument is this. Schmeiser could easily have won a case against Monsanto in 1996 for damages, since in such a case he wouldn't need to prove Monsanto contaminated his crop on purpose, but only that damages are consistant with that produced by volunteerism. Since the product(the gene) "belongs" to Monsanto, they are responsible for this damage. Just as any maker of a product is responsible for damage caused by their products.
As for your last "bizarre" examples, there is no interpretation of law that would get me charged with "murdering" an inanimate object. That wouldn't even see the inside of a police station much less a court of law. If I tried to keep the ram I would be liable for theft or more likely misappropriation of evidence. If I sold the ram I would have to return the money. That in fact is what Schmeiser tried to do. Of course Monsanto didn't "purposely" infect his land. But even so , rather than try to keep the fruits of "ill-gotten" gains, Schmeiser should have sued right off the bat. He probably would have won since a company must assume responsibility for the damage caused by their product especially if that damage is caused by the normal working of the product.
Sure information wants to be free, but how much are you willing to pay for the packaging?
Not allowing genes to be patented is a legislative NOT a judicial function.
But not allowing a ridiculous interpretation that isn't supported except by the strict letter of the law IS a judicial function.
Now, assuming you agree that applying the patent law as above in other "real" patent cases is legitimate, why should it be different with genes?
in no other areas of patents is it up to the patent holder to prove you obtained a patented product illegally,
Why should it be the same? In no other area does a patented technology virally infect non-encumbered technologies around it. Patented plants are nothing like *any other* patented technology, why should we treat them like they are?
If the patent couldn't be enforced in such situations, then there is no point in the patents, and ipso-facto the patent is invalid!
Not that this is relevant - if your patent is useless, tough luck. Nobody guaranteed you a profit. Last I checked there's no guarantee with a patent that you'll be able to enforce it.
Hell, the patent office routinely gives patents that are completely unjustified and they leave them to the courts to overturn... I believe that's even the stated policy of the US PTO.