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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
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?
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.
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
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artlu.net
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!
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.
what prevents a bioterrorist from grabbing a sample of regular wheat and making a virus for it? where is the new vulnerability?
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
Everyone knows not to eat wheat 1.0, but wait for a later version.
It's too buggy.
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!
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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.
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
Murderous, rampaging plant life is generally best combatted with the strains of "Puberty Love".
Start a happiness pandemic
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.
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.
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.
Some people have moderated this funny but it's actually a bit insightful. If the genetic changes and DNA are the equivilant of "open source" or "open dna" (which is what life should be) then we'd be able to fix genetic problems introduced by pharmacutical companies' products. Hell, peer review would be a Godsend in that industry b/c without it the nightmare involved in figuring out what caused a problem in X person A) costs too much B) Takes WAY too much time in lab tests, blood tests etc.
Were not very close to comparing what DNA a person has and saying, "Hey you'll be allergic to this drug" yet, but I for one can't wait for our open source dna overlords to realise keeping an open system is worth it.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.