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."

Comments

Re:Percy Schmeiser in his own words

[ifwm]

Nope. The irony would be if I did it AC.

Re:You may have taken biology...

[slipstick]

I am no friend of allowing companies to patent genes but this guy has nobody to blame but himself.

He knew the seed he saved was Round-up Ready Canola. As a farmer for 50 years he had to have known. At the time of discovering this he had two choices, 1) sue Monsanto for ruining his crop and infecting his otherwise clean seed, there is a good possibility he would have won. Actually this outcome is now almost assured due to Schmeiser losing his case, if that's not irony I don't know what is. 2) save the seed and use it next year knowing what Monsanto's terms of use were and knowing how they react to people using their patented product. Schmeiser chose the latter action and got caught, that's too bad. It shows me that I live in a province where the farmers don't appear much smarter than they ever were.

Secondly I don't feel sorry for any farmer that buys Monsanto's seed and than bitches about the contract terms. Christ, it's not like farmers don't know beforehand what the terms are, it's clearly spelled out in black and white. You don't like the terms, don't buy the seed, not exactly hard to figure out. But again, this province I live in breeds people who think big companies and the government "owe" them something. So they'll try to get away with it in the hopes that people will see them as some poor small farmer just trying to make a living.

Oh and by the way only 40% of Canola grown in Canada is Round-up Ready so there's still plenty of "clean" Canola seed available if farmers are so upset at Monsanto. But guess what, that 40% also tells me that there's alot of farmers who really aren't that upset or they were too stupid to have read the contract when they bought the seed, but again I don't feel sorry for them they bought their own misery.

While I personally don't think genes should be patentable, I also don't believe stupidity should be protected.