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Iraq law Requires Seed Licenses
Doc Ruby writes "The American Administrator of the Iraqi CPA (Coalition Provisional Authority) government, Paul Bremer, updated Iraq's intellectual property law to 'meet current internationally-recognized standards of protection.' The updated law makes saving seeds for next year's harvest, practiced by 97% of Iraqi farmers in 2002, the standard farming practice for thousands of years across human civilizations, newly illegal. Instead, farmers will have to obtain a yearly license for genetically modified seeds from American corporations. These GM seeds have typically been modified from IP developed over thousands of generations by indigenous farmers like the Iraqis, shared freely like agricultural 'open source.' Other IP provisions for technology in the law further integrate Iraq into the American IP economy."
That's ridiculous. While I do fully support the use of transgenic crops, I find it silly to force farmers into buying something they may not want.
Giving them the choice to buy GM seed is fine; forcing them to buy GM seed and abide by North American terms and conditions is debilitating.
"Max, come over here. French-Canadian bean soup. I want to pay. Let them leave me alone." - Dutch Schultz
I hope the Iraqi's enjoy this new "Freedom". I wonder why the US isn't using more non-GMO seeds 3which don't have the IP restrictions?
How ironic, The root of most civilizations comes from the so-called "Cradle of Civilization" which is a region of Iraq located between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.
How far do you think we would have progressed if the creators of these technologies demanded we use Their technologies and pay a license fee to use those technologies?
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
Does anyone seriously know what the patent system was originally created for? Cause it seems to be going too far in some situations.
Or they could, you know, NOT USE THOSE SEEDS, and instead continue using the strains they've been using for the last few thousand years or so. But then we wouldn't have our little whole-cloth pretext for a little political bashing, would we?
ABSURDITY, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
Maybe you haven't seen this story/editorial from Harper's Magazine.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
The "write up" is confusing. Are the Iraqis being forced to use the GM seeds? Can't just just continue using what they've been using?
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
Only if the farmers are using GM seeds. If they use normal seeds, then there is no problem with holding back seed for next year.
Typical bias.
Be it software or grain, the rules are the same - if you don't like the license, don't use the product - use a competing product with a license you can accept.
www.eFax.com are spammers
The U.S. regime will most likely criminalize the use of the olds seeds. And even if they do not its only a matter of time before the new seeds will "find" a way into their crops and the patent holders will begin to extort the iraqi farmers. Think its a conspiracy theory? It's already happening. IN CANADA
It is only illegal to save the GM seeds from one year to the next. Those farmers using the GM seeds are bound to the terms of a contract - just like someone using the GPL is bound to those terms.
A farmer not buying GM seeds is not compelled legally to do a damn thing different.
The problem is that snce a small part of their crop is contaminated by GM seeds, there's no practical way of getting rid of them. They don't have the option to choose not to use them if they've used them in the past (when the IP laws were different), or if any of their regular seeds ever got mixed up with GM seeds by mistake.
-jim
They also added a licensing scheme for getting shot by western soldiers. Despite being the standard practice for thousands of years across human civilizations, getting killed by western soldiers now requires corporate approval. Those without licenses will be kept alive until payment. They've also been talking about new beheading fees as well.
How are they enforcing this?
I mean, they have to get a sample, so just guard your land, and shoot any moron trying to swipe a sample of your crop - its tresspassing, plain and simple.
Personally, I'd put up a nice sized electric fence, get some dogs, and nice long rifle.
I wouldnt use the GM seeds, but if someone tried to "sample" my goods to "prove" I *was* using them, they'd lose that arm.
GPL'd web-based tradewars themed space game
when your choice is to use these seeds or starve?
Call me crazy, but I think not.
I know this is /. but the problem especially in this one is that most people here are shooting from the hip and not bothering to read the story.
.. and any changes you make are passed on to others .. who again improve them. This one is about companies getting something that was produced by someone else .. making small changes and then trying to licence it back - license something that was like GPL and not thier total IP in the first place. Iraq rightly IMO had laws against this.
The Story is about the US changing the laws regarding GM Seeds - not the Iraqis changing them. Previously in Iraq (and it still should be) it was illegal to sell a seed and say that you could not save the seeds from the plants. It is a pretty simple principle - you buy the seed, you can breed from it.
One way of looking at it is that seeds always have been kind of GPL - you get them for free
It should be that if GM seed companies don't like the Iraqi law then they should not sell thier seeds in Iraq.
Nobody in Iraq would want to be controlled by a foreign country and have thier food supplies dependent on seeds from that country.
Read the story dudes.
Hopefully they will send armies of lawyers over. To Iraq. To argue... with angry Iraqis... who have AK-47's....
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Really, should they even be worrying about seed licenses at all? That seems like it should be amazingly low on the list of things to do in a country that desperately needs improvements in electricity, health care, and general safety for the population. The finer points of agricultural IP law should wait until the Iraqis don't have to worry about being blown up when they walk outside.
Without getting into details of the patent theory, the 4 most celebrated reasons why patents exist are (according to late Judge Giles Rich)
- Incentive to inovate - back in the 1790s, there wasn't any big pharmaceutical laboratory or Del Monte, so to allow inventors to spend their time inventing and not wasting their talents down the factory, patents were a nice way to insure some subsides...
- Incentive to disclose - the bargain between the patentee and the PTO is protection v. disclosure. Hence, the new discovery is readily available for the rest of mankind, and promote the progress of arts and sciences
- Incentive to comercialize - the patent gives a right to exclude people from using the patented invention, making the inventor the manager of his rights (either licensing to other company or enjoying is own monopoly of distribution)
- Incentive to design around -- Because once you know what is patented, it can give you new ideas. Unfortunatly, it has been struck down somewhat by the so called doctrine of equivalent
More info : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patents ;http://www.1000ventures.com/business_guide/ipr/pa
However, the US have really blown a fuse here... It is enslaving a foreign country to the almighty US. For the oil, well, I could understand the general purpose, even though I do NOT agree with it. But this is just mean and wicked...
Oh well, 51% cannot be wrong. Or can they ?
Just my 2 Eurocents...
As I read the article, there is nothing which forces the farmer in Iraq to make use of IP Protected GM seeds. They may continue to use domestic or free varieties. The only issue is that in the past there was no legal protection for seed crop IP in Iraq, and now it is available.
It seems in the end, that if they want to re-use seed crops, they need only refrain from purchasing those which require a license. While in the technology industry, customers may require that you provide products which include IP that must be licensed, When you're making food the rules are different:
You may need to license software from Microsoft to make a product that works on your customer's computer.
You do not need to license grain from ConAgra to make flour that my stomach can digest.
Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.
Give me a break :/
More hand waving alarmists that don't actually read the law.
If any "IP" lawyers want to go over to Iraq and start filing lawsuits, I'll pay their airfares. Better that we fight the lawyers in Iraq rather than deal with them on our own soil.
The genetic children of those seeds would belong to the person who patented the genetic material or something, right?
This shows US is colonizing not "freeing" the countries it chooses to invade.
This looks a lot like the UK supporting independence in latin america in the XIX century to take control away from Spain.
In my current opinion, food products shouldn't be patented, or at least have a very limited patent life. Perhaps three years. Cause come on, it's food. Unlike software, food is a necessity. What this is-is greed.
This is not esoterica like software licences, this is basic ingredients for living, and these [insert strong epithet of choice here, my personal best candidate starts with a w] want to control it all. Makes the RIAA and fellow idiots look politely selfless by contrast.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Can't we just take the oil? Why do we need to run the whole fucking country?
I believe this means that this only applies to patented seeds. Of course, the law may or may not say anything about the patentability of common, naturally occurring seeds (eg. texas-based Ricetec's attempt to patent several varieties of basmati rice).
Who in Bush's name is going to enforce this law?
[o]_O
Or at least took the bulk of the "thought" in the article from one of the Chosky texts (I had read last year, don't recall the title) and supplemented it with links to VegSource and grain.org.
What neither of those sources, nor the writeup, bothered to mention that the Iraqis are not forced to use the GM seeds. It should be like this:
if (iraqis.useNewSeeds) {
$TEXT_OF_ARTICLE
} else {
$SAME AS BEFORE
}
More relevant information can be found here.
Basically, a lot of Iraqis are farmers but they still had to import plenty of bread before the war. Now, some firms in the US are giving them seeds to try out, and see what works best for their climates. One of the hopes is that seeds from strains that grow well in Arizona will succeed in Iraq due to similar climate conditions.
It's at most a neutral situation for Iraqis. If they don't like American seeds they're welcome to use their own from years past, buy them from fellow farmers who have them. But if the American GM seeds prove to be better suited for the climate and the Iraqi farmers decide to use those, then it's only fair that they obide by the rules governing the use of those seeds.
It's their call. If the GM seeds improve their yields dramatically, they're worth the price they have to pay for them. If the GM seeds aren't worth it, then the Iraqis won't use it.
Also, for the poster downthread who compared what the GM companies are doing to taking a GPLd program, changing one line, and charging money for it, that's somewhat of an apt analogy but you're missing the point.
If all I do is change one line and start selling, then I probably won't have much success selling back to the community of people who had made the original GPLd program. Just like the companies aren't likely to sell the seeds to Iraqis if there's really no added benefit.
However, if I take a program, invest a lot of time and money into it, and it is much better than the free version, then I have the option of selling it and you have the option of buying it if it makes your life better.
Whatever choice the Iraqi farmers make, is their call. All this provision does is make sure that if they chose to go the GM seed route, then they have to play by the rules. If not, then they can do whatever they want.
Just like the fact that you "have to" pay for Windows IF you use Windows doesn't prevent you from using some free alternative.
Ecce Europa - Web Design for Business
You are full of shit! They don't do that in dark rooms...hell, they do it out in the bright sunlight, not caring who knows.
I'm no fan of either the US invasion of Iraq or of the shennanigans of companies like Monsanto, but the revised IP law simply doesn't say what the article says it says. The relevant provision is on p.22, section 66, par. B. It prohibits farmers from re-using the seed of protected varieties only. It doesn't prohibit them from re-using the seed that they've always used. And contrary to what some posters have claimed, Monsanto and other such companies cannot acquire ownership of traditional varieties. The same law provides clear criteria for patents that allow patenting only of newly developed varieties. So unless patents are granted improperly (a different, though as we know, significant problem), farmers in Iraq can go right on re-using their seed just as they always have.
Indeed, I was struck by one provision of this law, which grants fewer rights to the patent holder than does US patent law. Section 8 on p.3. allows people who started using or manufacturing, or even preparing to use or manufacture, something covered by a patent before the issuance of the patent, to continue to do so! In other words, no submarine patents! In some ways, this new patent law is actually progressive.
By the way, parts of this law sound to me like they were not written by a native speaker of English. Maybe I just don't know the technical terminology of plant breeding. Is it normal in English to talk about the "education" of a plant? This sounds like a mistranslation from another language to me.
It won't matter eventually after the US pulls out of Iraq, because the country will do what they want. I fully believe the appointed leaders of the liberated state are playing us as much as we are playing them. They will accept laws like this now and throw them out as soon as they no longer need us there.
-Slashdot Junky
.
Landfill Mining Co.
Managing the (Un)natural Resources of Tomorrow
fn 159: A truly innocent infringer may be able to rebut the presumption of use. However, that would likely prove difficult once the innocent infringer became aware that the genetically modified crop was present -- or was likely to be present -- on his or her land and continued to practice traditional farming methods, such as saving seed.
t ml
Canada >> Supreme Court of Canada >>
Citation: Monsanto Canada Inc. v. Schmeiser, [2004] 1 S.C.R. 902, 2004 SCC 34 Noteup
Date: 2004-05-21
Docket: 29437
URL: http://www.canlii.org/ca/cas/scc/2004/2004scc34.h
just ask this guy
What a very conservative argument! If you argue like this and agree it's valid, you are conservative. If this isn't a good argument for you, you are an Enlightenment Liberal (which includes Bush "Conservatives").
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
"...the infringer Schmeiser earned no profit from the invention, plaintiff Monsanto is entitled to nothing."
c or d=69
http://www.genelaw.info/pages/casedetail.asp?re
"The US solution to this problem is to provide GMO seeds, which require a license to use. The Iraqis don't have much choice in the matter... the economy has been devistated, and they need to take whatever they can get."
Uh huh.
1) "Many of the fields have withered and died because there hasn't been enough irrigation, or money to pay the labor to support the fields. "
2) "Grain houses have been destroyed. Crops have been contaminated. "
3) "The agricultural economy has collapsed... hard to sell your produce when there are warplanes bombing your village."
[Emphasis mine]
So how is GMO seeds going to "provide more irrigation", "money to pay farm labour", "rebuild grain houses", and "stop warplanes bombing your village"?
"The US solution to this problem is to provide GMO seeds, which require a license to use. The Iraqis don't have much choice in the matter... the economy has been devistated, and they need to take whatever they can get."
They have a choice in the matter. Just as they have "outside help" when it comes to stemming the US's meddling. They have neighbours that have seeds. But obviously "seeds" is the least of their problems as far as agriculture is concerned.
That's your positive assertion. Well, actually, it's the question you're begging. It's generally a reasonable assumption that people in a war zone have trouble getting food.
Good thing they got that all hammared out before, say, running water and electricity. Don't want to graciously offer people, I dunno, medical treatment or schools or other such luxuries and then replay you by stealing your genetically modified corn, right?
"As I said, I'm no fan of Monsanto, but this new law isn't nearly as bad as the article claims."
It usually isn't. I'll also put money on something else that I've observed. Next time we have a story on patents, someone is going to bring up the case, just as the OP did. And like the original it's going to be missing the important parts you added. And so forth and so on, till the end of time.
What does that mean? Well it means that this site isn't for learning, but socializing, and general bellyaching. Nothing more, for if it was? We wouldn't repeatedly be seeing the same bloody things (quotes too) over and over.
Wind
It will be here soon, too. Pollen is airborne. Eventually you won't be able to save your own seed, and they have proven they can control the law and court system to the extent that if the pollen infects your crops, you "stole" their "patented" IP. It's why those of us who have been against this have been speaking up about it. Their plant "IP" law is viral, and you can't get away from it once it's released into the wild to grow. Google starlink corn, canola, superweed for starters.
You cannot both "support it" and think you or anyone else can have any practical alternative. Joe farmer down the street has IP protected corn, you don't, next year the seed you save from your own crop that had nothing to do with the patented stuff will have a certain percentage of "their" genetic material in it. You lose. Every crop you try to grow will become more infected. The wind and the law won't allow it. It's only a matter of time now before global food monopolies. And in iraq you can see they aren't even waiting for it to spread semi naturally, they are just mandating it, showing exactly where they have always been coming from, exactly like we have warned against and been told it was "tinfoil hat" or "luddism". Now here, you see the proof, what they intend for not only iraq, but the planet, as much as they can.
Let's go to original from which you cited those words, and look at the context.
... ... by 30 m. Therefore canola pollen can move at least this distance....9 6.htm
... ... have been too small to capture the full spread of altered ... "It's the longest distance ... Most previous studies of gene flow have been done on far ...S pread+for+Miles-status-25-newsID-277... - 24k - Cached - Similar pages
The issue for Iraq is whether the farmer can save the seed grown once an agribiz claims they have found their genes in samples from his farm.
The answer was no, in the Canadian case.
He said he didn't buy the GM seed and that pollen spreads. Monsanto claimed it doesn't spread.
Current research says he's right.
QUOTE, a couple hits from a Google search:
GENE TRANSFER BETWEEN CANOLA (BRASSICA NAPUS) AND RELATED WEED
www.isb.vt.edu/brarg/brasym96/brown
Genes From Engineered Grass Spread for Miles, Study Finds
gene-flow study
www.onlypunjab.com/ fullstory904-insight-Genes+From+Engineered+Grass+
END QUOTE
Too late for him in this court case though.
Monsanto, because of the legal choice they used, did not get to take his bank account and his farm -- but they did stop him from saving the seeds that grew in his field to reuse.
The rest of the quote you cited is:
"Outcome:The Supreme Court held that the patent was valid and defendant/appellant Schmeiser infringed. However, because Monsanto elected to seek profits as a remedy, and the infringer Schmeiser earned no profit from the invention, plaintiff Monsanto is entitled to nothing."
That's "$Nothing" not "nothing at all" -- and that's the important part.
Schmeiser's neighbors growing the same species bought "Roundup Ready" seed. He did not. They sprayed with Roundup, killing everything but their Monsanto GM plants. He did not. All the plants flowered and set seed (Monsanto should have changed the timing of flowering, to really have some kind of control on genetic movement, eh?)
More from that study:
"Seed movement. Canola plants have small seed (approximately 200 seeds/g). During normal farm operations the seed will inevitably be lodged in farm machinery and transported around the farm and surrounding area. Seed also can be distributed by animals and birds, and seed can be lost while being transported for processing. In the Pacific Northwest region of the U.S.A., spring canola has only recently been grown commercially and already volunteer plants have been observed several kilometers from where they originated."
Remember -- once you know, or have reason to know, that your farm _may_ be producing some seed containing patented material, you're breaking the law if you save the seed growing in your own fields.
Once you know the stuff spreads, goes into weedy relatives of the crop (and back into crops elsewhere), spreads by birds, spreads in equipment tires and harvesting machinery that's taken from one field to another -- well, you know, eh?
Pollen didn't learn how to fly just because GMOs were made. This problem is something that has been happening for hundreds of thousands of years. The rates of outcrossing and introgression are ridiculously low, and any so-called "infected" crop can easily be removed. It's only stealing if you keep it.
"Max, come over here. French-Canadian bean soup. I want to pay. Let them leave me alone." - Dutch Schultz
Well they wanted to put in terminator genes but the rabid left stopped them...
The very Idea of making the basics of farming "illegal". Such acts only serve to make people hate you more.
Way back watermelon as we know them were nearly brought to extinction by a form of blight. Universities and such had developed breeds resistant to the disease, but either flavor, color, shape, and even the seeds were radically different from what we think of as the watermelon.
Frustrated, in about four years my great grandfather and cross-bred a breed that had black seeds, a red core, full flavor, and striped green that was nearly impervious to disease.
In his memoirs he comments on how people are amazed at how he didn't acquior a fortune on his creation. He talks about how natural life, such as watermelons, were on patentable and all anyone needed to produce them was the seed widely available from one of his melons.
Whenever stories like these crop up, I think about how rich my family could have been, and am always greatful that we aren't everytime I see a youngster enjoying a fresh cut melon. I am also grieved by the fact that patents like this even exist. And that companies, not the farmers, hold them and reap the financial benefit from them.
How long will it be before we will have to pay a licensing fee to cook with these IP laden herbs and vegetables?
==================
Hippie Logger Jock
==================
No, this was more like one of those animated bits they were showing during or about the same time as "the day after" back in the early 1980's. But there is a certain similarity. Thanks.
Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.
Ah, but you can learn a great deal from watching people socialize, and even more from observing what they choose to bellyache about and how they go about it. Given that you get to see both sides of every issue do this, you can actualy learn a great deal here.
All it takes is an open-yet-skeptical mind.
-- MarkusQ
My grandfather was a wheat farmer in Kansas and practiced this method, saving wheat he considered 'best' to be seed wheat for the next year.
This could not have been illegal; he owned the original wheat and thus the intellectual property contained within it.
I suspect this story is flim-flam (anti-bush propoganda), since if true it would be a PR nightmare for them if true, both domestically in the farm country and internationally.
Of course, it might be true and the bible belt voters who chose their president based on his religious beliefs instead of policies that benefit the rural poor in that selfsame bible belt... well, people vote their pocketbooks unless someone distracts them. I hope this is a distraction that can highlight the unequal nature of the benefits bestowed on the Bush administration's friends.
Unitarian Church: Freethinkers Congregate!
Or they could, you know, NOT USE THOSE SEEDS, and instead continue using the strains they've been using for the last few thousand years or so.
There's one practical problem here: How is your typical Iraqi (or American or Canadian or Mexican, for that matter) farmer going to set up a proper testing lab to determine whether their seeds are contaminated with patented DNA? This is not just astronomically expensive; it's far beyond the technical capability of most small farmers everywhere. And much of the technical knowledge is held closely by the GM corporations.
The claim that crops like wheat and barley aren't wind-pollinated is not quite accurate. (A better term might be "disingenuous".) Like all grasses, they are fundamentally wind pollinated. The claim that they're not is based on the fact that seed producers keep the strains sufficiently separated so that they can't cross-pollinate. Pollination within a seed-grain field is partly done by the wind, and partly by mechanical means. The growers can play fast and loose with the terminology because the separation that is maintained between strains forces inbreeding. When they say "no wind pollination", they mean between widely-separated fields.
Also, it would be easy enough for someone to toss a handfull of GM seed into your field. It would cross-pollinate with your grain, and next year's seed would be contaminated with GM DNA. It's real hard to defend against this.
Suggesting that farmers save only non-GM seed is basically cynical in any situation where GM crops may be grown by your neighbor (or introduced into your field) without your knowledge. There is no practical way for most farmers to test their own seed for IP violations. Even if they had the technical know-how, the cost of the lab would typically be far more than their annual profit.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
-- the rates are not necessarily low, it's a huge variable, it can be from a lot, to very little, but the bottom line is, if it's in your crop they claim it's *theirs* no matter how it got there.
.. well.. laughable. Junk science. It's ludicrous. If what you claim is true,please, go up to canuckistan and make you an easy billion or more "easily removing" canola superweed for folks, you should be able to clean up with your superior skills and advanced agronomy techniques.
-- plants haven't been patented for hundreds of thousands of years
-- "easily removed" is simply
-- the cost of even testing is huge, and guess who pays it
-- to use the word "stealing" referring to someone who's crop got infected is blaming the victim, it's like if someone chucked a baseball through your window, you had to pay for the window, and they guy who threw it calls you a thief for stealing his baseball and not giving it back, and the way this plant IP law works it's exactly like that. It is pure nuts, unfair, stupid, misguided, harmful, and does not promote the useful arts and sciences, it promotes the establishment of a small handful of international corporations owning the planets food supply.
This action by the US government and it's appointed stooge puppets in iraq is heinous and proves what utter corrupt bastards they are, along with the companies pushing this scheme.
Once again we have proven we have the best government big corporate money can buy. You can approve of their actions, I disapprove, so we'll leave it at that.
Yep.
d ay /pdf/020007.pdf
So when the genes spread into related plants and the soil, after a few generations, when two parents met that both carried them, the offspring would die.
A lawyer's design. Ignorant that mechanisms exist by which the stuff would in fact spread -- laterally. Crop to weed, and back to crops elsewhere.
And several generations later, high rates of sterility emerge wherever the DNA has gotten to both parents. All this to make money faster.
Thank God for the scientists, the better they are the worse names they're called by the agribusiness lobbyists.
You can tell the scientists -- they use footnotes, cite their sources, and put their names with what they write.
Just search for half an hour and read what you find. Yes, there are nutcases all over the subject claiming they know the truth without any experimental evidence. On the 'left' they're in the streets and chatrooms; on the 'right' they're in the law firms and boardrooms and where the money is.
Ignore them. Read the people who publish in refereed journals and give rebuttable evidence.
Think. Why would we have imposed this kind of ruling on Iraq by fiat during an occupation? What help is it to the Iraqui farmers? Who benefits? Who is put at risk?
Read.
Lawlobbybizcritters anonymously declare their faith that whatever pays them must be right.
http://www.socgenmicrobiol.org.uk/pubs/micro_to
http://www.twnside.org.sg/title/gene.htm
Nielsen, K.M., Bones, A.M., Smalla, K. and van Elsas, J.D. (1998). Horizontal gene transfer from transgenic plants to terrestrial bacteria - a rare event? FEMS Microbiology Reviews 22, 79-103.
Doolittle, W.F. (1999). Lateral genomics. Trends Cell Biol 9, 5-8.
Jain, R., Rivera, M.C. and Lake, J.A. (1999). Horizontal gene transfer among genomes: The complexity hypothesis. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 96, 3801-3806; Shapiro, J. (1997). Genome organization, natural genetic engineering and adaptive mutation. TIG 13, 98-104; Ho, 1998,1999 (note 4).
Ho, M.W., Ryan, A. and Cummins, J. (1999). The cauliflower mosaic viral promoter - a recipe for disaster? Microbial Ecology in Health and Disease 11, 194-197.
Ho, M.W., Ryan, A. and Cummins, J. (2000). Hazards of transgenic plants containing the cauliflower mosaic viral promoter. Microbial Ecology in Health and Disease (in press).
If I buy seeds, they become my property. I can do whatever I want with them, plant, sell or eat them. If I grow them and the resulting plants grow seeds themselves, these seeds are my very own property, too. I can do whatever I like with my property, and nobody has any right to tell me when I can put my property in the ground and when not!
Yes, just like the CD your commercial compiler came on.
...subject to the terms of the licence "shrinkpwrapped" with them.
No, this is not software, where other kinds of law apply than with nearly all other products. (Like other products, only the "how to build it" should be protected by IP law, not the product itself!)
And those shrinkwrap toilet papers have exactly no relevance when it comes to court, at least here in Germany. You have a contract of sale, which is the only relevant contract.
Unfortunately, when you purchase GM seeds from the owner of the intellectual properly, you're effectively licenced for one use of them only - growing the crop for feed or industrial use.
Why should I? If I have a normal contract of sale, those crops become my property and I can deal with it like I please. It would be something other, if I didn't buy the seeds, but made a contract
where I bought the right to use it.
If you acquire the seed in any other way (whether through purchase from someone who doesn't have a licence to sell it as seedstock, or from your own fields) you aren't licenced to use it as seedstock.
Here again, if I have a normal contract of purcase, the crops become my property. If the seller had any contracts that prohibited him from selling it to me, it's his problem.
You can mill it, you can feed it to your pigs, you can use it to make biodiesel, but if you stick it in the ground you have committed an unlicensed use of the seed.
But I'm not bound to any licenses, it would only violate IP law, if I "built" my own seeds.
And, after all, this is totally stupid. Only ways how to construct something should be protected by IP law, not the products themselves and what the owner does with them.
"Yep ... this exactly what anti-GM folks have been saying for years ... once a new gene gets into the wild and it provides benefits, it will naturally propogate. It is called Evolution (except in Kansas and Georgia ... and I get to make that joke since I grew up in one and lived in the other for awhile) and we are most definitely tampering with it."
But, but, we're humans we always know the consequences of our actions. e.g. drugs, food, environment, IP. We know what's best.
Just a quick note... there is no CPA anymore. It was dissolved with the introduction of the transitional Iraqi government headed by Dr. Allawi.
Bremer's position of CPA administrator was dissolved and replaced with an ambassador to Iraq. That position is being filled by John Negroponte.
The Iraqi government is free to change this law at any time. Afterall, sovereinty was handed back to the Iraqi people. That is the theory at least.....
It has been a long time since commercial farmers have harvested their own seeds. Ferry-Morse has been in the business since 1856, Burpee since the 1880s. Contemporaries of Mendel and Darwin. Free seed doesn't mean much to a farmer if yields are low, crops are vulnerable to insects and diseases, perishable, labor-intensive, difficult to market.
I don't agree with the concept of legally preventing people saving a portion of their crop as seed stock; that's fundamentally wrong, in my opinion. I also think that allowing the patenting of aspects of plants is legislative negligence, because I can't think of a single example of another patent which has the danger of polluting the IP of others (whether private or public domain) with its own IP without knowledge or consent.
I can see why particular companies would want plant patents. Monsanto's patents on glyphosate will have expired by now, meaning that anyone can produce a Roundup-workalike legally. Producing plants which are glyphosate-resistant and covered by patents helps them do two things. It gets them an income peripherally associated with an old herbicide with very strong brand recognition, and it gets genes associated with resistance to that herbicide out into wild relatives - this is important, because it means that by the time the plant patent expires, glyphosate will be commercially useless for both themselves and their competitors and there will be a marketing opportunity for the "Next Big Herbicide" and its matching resistant crops. Paranoid? Me? Maybe, but I don't think so. They have to know those things will crossbreed and go feral. If they get the opportunity to litigate a few other seed suppliers out of business along the way too, so much the better. You think Microsoft looks like a litigious, anticompetitive bullyboy now? They're going to look pretty tame in comparison with companies like Monsanto, unless people start waking up to the dangers associated with our current patent system and take action to correct it.
I have no problem with people protecting their research and effort, provided that they can do so without forcing others to use that IP without their consent. By effectively releasing those plant genes into the wild, it's only a matter of time before "infringing copies" start appearing in other wild and commercial plants. Patents were meant to stop others using your ideas without your consent - they were never meant to allow you to sneak your ideas into the work of others and then demand compensation.
He cut water for irrigation and thus caused massive enviromental distruction.
Second: We dont bomb farmland. We drop bombs with the precision to go through an open window of a building.
Repeat after me. "We do not use WW2 tactics and technology"
Life is not for the lazy.
As the law stands, GM plants contain somebody's IP, and that somebody gets the right to say what it can be used for.
There is some IP that belongs to someone in nearly any product of a little compexity. Ever saw a car manufacturer telling the people on which roads they could drive or a shoe manufacturer dictating where you can walk or what you can do while wearing the shoes? Nobody would accept that!
IP law prevents that you build someone others products that he ivented. When you buy crops, and it grows crops itself, you have not rebuilt anything, so you can't be held liable that a plant is growing and produces seeds, that is a simple natural occurence!
Kosi
Oh well, 51% cannot be wrong. Or can they ? ;)
51% of this country wasn't wrong. I Kerry had made it into office, there's no telling how bad he would have fucked everything up. He never defined ANY of his views on how he would handle current and future situations. He just said that Bush was an idiot and his way was the Right Way. I voted for Bush because at least he has a plan. It might not be the best plan and I may not agree with all of it, but it's better than electing snipe.
LOAD "SIG",8,1
LOADING...
READY.
RUN
I voted for Bush because at least he has a plan. It might not be the best plan and I may not agree with all of it, but it's better than electing snipe.
Uh huh. And can you tell us what Bush's plan is? I mean, beyond the platitudes of "beating the freedom-hating terrorists and brining peace and freedom to the Iraqi people". Chances are you have no idea what Bush's plan is, so you based your vote on a fantasy of some plan.
If you want some insight into Bush's plan, I suggest you read this.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
So, what do you think we'll see first? A total pull out from Iraq or the release of Longhorn? =)
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Look at Order 39. It basically allows non-iraq companies to remove 100% profit from Iraq without it being taxed and they are not required to reinvest in Iraq. Add to that they can own Iraq resources (not just oil) totally out right.
This sort of stuff is what creating insurgents and probably more terrorists.
Cars and footwear are fundamentally different products from GM crops, though. Although my footwear frequently smells like it is capable of reproducing, and my car isn't far behind, neither can produce a new item containing either Blundstone or General Motors intellectual property no matter what I try. GM crops will cross-pollinate other plants, be spread by wind or animals or vehicles, and the patented genes will make their way into places where the GM crop was not deliberately sown. That makes others infringe the GM crop's patents without their knowledge or consent, and would be morally akin to SCO disseminating a computer virus and then filing suit against everyone whose system got infected for using and distributing SCO IP without authorisation. That's the issue here. Not any half-remembered Doctrine of First Sale bullshit. Not any "It's my property, if I want to stick it in the ground I can" arguments, although I personally agree that it is morally reprehensible to force some third-world (or even first-world) farmer to mill all their grain and buy new seedstock rather than keep part of the last harvest for planting. Not any easily rebuttable "They'd never get away with it for any other product" arguments, when it's plain that software and physical goods have been sold with different usage restrictions for different purposes and to different customers for years, especially in the commercial and government sectors. Despite your protests that things can't be like that because they should not be like that, the law says otherwise. I tend to agree with you on the point that things should be very different, but the law disagrees. The law needs to be fixed, and pertinent and persuasive points need to be made. Hell, I know this is Slashdot, and I know I'm not the most coherent person here at times, and I'm sure your heart is in the right place, but so help me if I need to explain this a fourth time you're either getting a fourth freak or your first fan - I can't decide which.
"Nobody in Iraq would want to be controlled by a foreign country and have thier food supplies dependent on seeds from that country. Read the story dudes."
I suggest you read more then the story. Iraqi people don't have a choice in the matter. A lot of the laws being implemented are working out great for Corporations outside of Iraq but is tantamount to straight out looting.
Read Bremers Orders put in place.
Oh, and how is it liberated? More people are dying now than under Saddam, less people have healthcare, there is less food, less electricity and less security. Liberated? Wow.
Geez..I had nausea since the 2nd of november, now I think I need to puke..
I think that people are missing two very important facts.
1) Iraq will not enforce any such laws any time soon. They could all be using GM seeds and even if soemone did know, the courts wouldn't care. They are far more concerned with police officers getting executed and instability to give two shits about sending out inspectors armed with genetic testing kits and fighting multi-year long legal battles. Simply put, even if this law was to stay, it would be at least another 5 years before anyone would bother to waste manpower to enforce it.
2) Iraq is going to have an election within three months (knock on wood). They can elect whoever they damn well please at that point and the US can't do a damned thing about it. If the new government revokes such rules, then the rules are revoked. Hell, Iraq could scrap every rule the US made if that tickled their fancy.
Look, the 'laws' put in place in Iraq are written in the sand. They are what the US thinks is a good guide line to running a nation. More specifically, they are a neocons wet dream of how to run an economy with a smidgen of practicality thrown in when they are forced to. So, if you want to call it proof that Republicans would turn the world into a dark and evil place if given the chance, then you can certainly make that conclusion. On the other hand, if you want to conclude that the poor Iraqis are fucked because of IP laws, pull your head out of the sand, and pretend you are a geek long enough to actually see what is happening. The laws are not being enforced, and they won't be enforced until long after Iraq has had the chance to change the laws.
Really people. This is Slashdot. I would think geeks could muster enough intelligence to look past their own political views to see forest for the trees. There are lots of conclusions to draw from this story about neocon views on IP laws and the like, but you need to take a massive dose of self delusion to read any further into this. The fact that write ups like the one that was used get through the editors is pathetic.
I should probably explain some more.
It's one thing to patent food products such as soda, chips, and other things as someone else said in this overall thread.
It's another thing, in my opinion, to patent genetic material. Cause once you grow something from that genetic material, and grow more stuff from the seeds of that, it gets real messy.
A (funny) extreme example: Someone invests a gene. Someone pays to use that gene in their child. That child grows up, mates, and passes on that gene. Does the patent holder have the right to charge for the grandchild's use of the gene? (I really hope I explained that correctly.)
First, I want you to read parts 2 and 3 of the "almost Kerry" interview.
Now read the transcript of the Bush interview. I didn't agree with all of his points, but he at least has a vision about what he wants to do and some clear defined lines about what he will and will not do.
I agree that Iraq is a sore spot. I wish we hadn't gone in there in the first place. But to make that the *only* point in the election (for a US person at least) is rediculous. There are health care issues, border issues, crime issues, and a host of other problems we need solutions to, not just a vague promise of a better tomorrow. After Clinton fucked an intern, and I saw this picture, I really do believe that America needs to do what we need to do because obviously a democrat can't help the world opinion of us.
Eric
LOAD "SIG",8,1
LOADING...
READY.
RUN
"education" of a plant?
Traduction: a plant that makes profit for Bush's friends. Other plants are "deluded terrorists" part of the "seed of evil".
Microsoft is pure dog-ma. FreeBSD is pure cat-ma.
Negroponte's appointment is telling about our goals in Iraq.
from Wikipedia:
they are willing to kill themselves to rid their country of the invaders, occupiers and oppressors.
Amerika is the new Soviet Union.
Hey, thanks for those links. Bill O'Reilly did a simply amazing job of demolishing his straw man effigy of John Kerry. I didn't realize you were so well informed by such an outstanding source of information, and that you've had a firm grasp of the realities of Bush's Iraq plan.
One final question for you: Do you think that O'Reilly puts his thumb up George Bush's asshole while he's blowing him? I don't think George is the type to go for that sort of stuff, since it might be construed as "gay" and could hurt his image, but behind closed doors, you never know.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
seems you're doing the same thing..
It never occured to you, nor was it mentioned in the article, that the Iraquis might want to buy GM seeds. If the seed companies are doing what you say, i.e. not selling seeds where the laws are not in their favor, then the Iraqis will have to change their laws to encourage importation.
The article did not specify if this was the case, therefore your prejudiced views against GM seeds, (whose "one little change" could mean the entire population eats pesticide free grain in abundance) are just that.
not to get off on a rant here, but the anti GM crowd sounds suspiciously like the anti-nuke crowd: "Fossil fuel plants are killing the environment, don't use them for anything, but don't build anything else either"
What are you talking about? This is the law in Iraq, has been for 6 months. There's no reason to believe it will be changed. It's most useful to back Iraqi "government" policy of spending billions on American agritech, rather than Iraqi agriculture, in the "reconstruction". Following the pattern of using profiteering American "consultants" instead of cheap Iraqis to rebuild the country, its labor force and economy. There's no reason whatsoever to believe that the American profiteering of Iraq will get anything but worse. Where have you got your head stuck? What kind of kickback are *you* getting from this particular rape of Iraq?
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make install -not war
YES! Fascism is corporatism. You're describing the means by which fascism, the corporate state, is enforced on the people. Resonating with the Nazi and Mussolini imagery you've seen all your life, with maybe a dash of Franco. Fascism is corporatism, though corporate media have switched you to thinking it could never happen here. It is happening here, and thereby across the globe. Your conflation of labor and fascism is nonsense: the fascist/communist conflicts that almost destroyed the world from 1940s Eurasia has echoed in geopolitics ever since.
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make install -not war
I once met these people who were growing Tomatos in Malaysia. They bought GM seeds from Europe at a cost per kilo larger than the price of gold. These seeds grew into fantastic Tomatoes and the profit was huge
But while these Tomatos can breed, the next generation is a normal, non GM Tomato, which really simplifies the situation: the farmers can't be accused of stealing IP because the IP dies with the first generation.
So why does this American grain not work the same way? Is there a technical problem with the production grain (different from Eurpean tomato?) or is it better business to allow your IP to spread itself across the landscape?
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Humanity is Forgotten, Dogs Eat the Corpses
The problem is that for most GM seeds, you don't actually buy the seed, you only license the use of it to produce one crop.
Ah, ok. This way could be legal in Germany, too. Although I can't imagine why anyone would pay for this license, when he could buy the cops somewhere else.
Kosi
Stop the pacifist plague. Ask your representative to bring home US criminal heroes.
The Guardian - Marines defend soldier's killing of Iraqi
UN News Centre - Iraq: UN human rights chief concerned over plight of civilians in Falluja
Amnesty International - Iraq: Urgent action needed to prevent war crimes
Isn't IPv6 gonna solve this problem too?
*sees karma walking away...*
Love all, Trust few, Follow one.
Catching up on a six month stack of Science, I notice that lateral gene transfer between plants also has turned out to happen through the intermediary of common parasites. So it's not just the pollen spreading in the wind from one plant to a related plant.
... but I repeat myself.
... reported in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA that a genetic parasite belonging to yeast has suddenly jumped into many unrelated species of higher plants recently. ... Until 1995, this parasite was thought to be confined to yeast and only one genus of higher plants out of the 25 surveyed had the parasite. But in a new survey of species from 335 genera, 48 were found to have the parasite.
...the researchers are able to conclude that almost all of the horizontal gene transfer events were independent and must have occurred very recently. "This massive wave of lateral transfers is of entirely recent occurrence, perhaps triggered by some key shift in the intron's invasiveness within angiosperms [i.e., higher plants]"
.... in order for the splicing gene carried by the parasite to become expressed, it has to have a signal that is recognized by the host. ...
It's NOT a newly known mechanism, just new to me as a reader --
Google : about 7,560 for "horizontal OR lateral" +"gene transfer" +parasite.
This isn't a surprise to the biotech companies -- they USE the same method to transfer genes, so they know well that it happens without humans stealing the patented seed. Hypocritical lawyers
The worry is that the tool that promptes horizontal transfer may itself have escaped into the wild.
So while the agribiz lawyers are arguing that the patented genes CANNOT spread except by theft, the researchers have been publishing studies showing that in fact, the DO and WILL spread despite attempts to control them.
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Sample of fairly old news on this that any agribiz lawyer could have known if they'd looked:
http://www.soyinfo.com/haz/horizontal.shtml
"Horizontal Gene Transfer - New Evidence"
by Dr. Mae Wan Ho
December 4, 1998
Moreover, all the higher plants that have gained the group I intron has the same one, as the DNA base sequence is more than 92% identical.
So, what triggered this recent explosive invasion of the higher plants by the particular genetic parasite?
it was reported in the Journal Nature that genes transferred into transgenic plants can be up to 30 times more likely to escape than the plant's own genes.
Is it possible that the recent massive horizontal gene transfer from yeast to higher plants was triggered by commercial genetic engineering biotechnology itself?
Genetic engineering makes use of artificial genetic parasites as gene carriers, to transfer genes horizontally between unrelated species. These artificial parasites are made from parts of the most aggressive naturally occurring parasites like the group 1 intron discussed here.
The same kinds of explosive horizontal gene transfer have already been documented among viruses and bacteria which are responsible for the recent resurgence of drug and antibiotic resistant infectious diseases (reviewed by Ho et al, Microbial Ecology in Health and Disease vol 10, 33-39m 1998).