Slashdot Mirror
Google Accused of Bio-piracy
Simon Phillips writes "ZDNet is reporting
that Google has been accused of being the 'biggest
threat to genetic privacy' this year for its plan to create a searchable database of genetic information. From the article: 'Google was presented with an award as part of the Captain
Hook Awards for Biopiracy in Curitiba, Brazil, this week. The organisers allege that Google's collaboration with genomic research institute J. Craig Venter to create a searchable online database of all the genes on the planet is a clear example of biopiracy.'"
Gnetics?
OK, if theres piracy going on, wheres the torrent stream?
liqbase
There are much better things to go after google for if you don't like them (*cough*censorhip*in*China*France*Germany*US*Unwa
The monopolization of genetic information is a serious issue - people are trying to do stupid things - like attempting to apply copy protection measures (both physical and legal) to life. Life attempts to copy itself & tradional copyright / patent laws should not apply.
Unfortunately, these awards look like shameless self-promotion rather then a serious attempt to tackle the problem.
My pics.
I can understand the meaning of pirate as in someone who sails the seas and acts in piracy - stealing others' belongs by force.
I recognise the notion of piracy as in copying material which has been copyrighted, conducted by a 'pirate'. But I prefer the term copyright infringement.
But what the heck is 'Bio-piracy'? Because privacy and piracy sound vaguely familiar isn't reason enough, IMHO. Naming the awards 'the Captain Hook awards' seems even more facetious.
From TFA, "Google, in cooperation with Craig Venter, are developing plans to make all of our genomes Googlable to facilitate the brave new world of private genetically-tailored medicines" does not equal piracy, IMHO.
And to tackle their argument, they have not outlined why genetically tailored medicines are bad, not why holding them in private hands is wrong. And private means exactly what? The copyright to GNU/Linux is held in private hands. And Google giving public access to work done by the human genome sequence project seems a lot better than letting all research in the hands of a very small amount of drug companies, those that are most interested in profiting from keeping information 'secret'.
Biopiracy? doesn't that imply theft? how are they getting this genetic material? O.o
I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.
Mark Twain
The information is being put out for "free." (advertiser supported). But wouldn't this actually be a boon for research scientists? Better searches than BLAST maybe?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but if you are someone with the resources to even do anything with this type of information, you will most likely be able to obtain it through sources other than Google.
This guy's the limit!
Google is monopolizing genetic resources by putting genetic information online for free?
Sounds to me like these guys are a bunch of kooks who are attacking any large company who uses the words "genetic" and "database" in the same sentence.
Google is one of the biggest, so they automatically attack.
Isn't April 1 TOMORROW?
Are these guys worried about genes of individual people being searched, or privately owned, corperate made|discovered genes?
If it is the latter, I don't see a problem.
Technoli
Why is it that when a company makes information private, they are considered greedy and secretive, but when a company makes information freely accessible over the internet, they are considered pirates?
Register the editry.
I guess they're after some Yarrr-NA.
:)
Ouch, sorry about that
We're gonna need the BioNinjas and BioZombies to come kick Google's @$$.
...then they laughed at Google, now they fight Google, but eventually Google wins... It's the fight part at the moment... or has Google already won?
1. gene sequences
2. google
3. big pharma
4. profit!
Except that genbank already does that for free.
The ultimate gatekeeper of your genetic privacy is YOU. What isn't in the database can not be googled.
First entomology, then virology, and finally bioinformatics systems. Bugs follow me wherever I go.
Making data publicly available at no charge is evil and advancing the privatisation of genetic data. That makes sense. Torvalds, Cox and Stallman must be evil for all that Free software. The Gutenberg Project must be pure evil for making all that literature publicly available - who knows what Evil Corporations(TM) might do with that information? Seems to me that this 'bio-piracy' malarkey is a thinly veiled primitivist agenda.
This made me spit out my coffee... Arrrrg!
There's a balance between communication and proliferation. There really is.
If a person is being tested for a degree on material, they shouldn't have access to the answers. But if a person is working in the field, they *should*. And if a person is curious, they probably should too.
This is just taking it too far. There may be justifiable reasons why evil corperation X in country Z shouldn't have access to information Gamma, but what real difference will it make if they can google for it. There's a much greater chance of them screwing something up if they're evil than getting something right.
Weight that against the 1000's of corperations/individuals/research groups also looking at information Gamma and doing something promising, and google is, on average, doing a good service.
I have to google for facts that make our research institute run literally daily. Usually its simple stuff like " what the hell is bentonite and how much can we put in this beaker without breaking something." or "what the heck is this photoflo stuff. It works great for this demonstration experiment, but we can't find the bottle..." a short google later, and we have a home brew wetting agent made, in the tank, and making the flow over a glass edge laminar just as we wanted.
Biopiracy? Please: Communication is a *vital* part of the scientific method. Shure, 1/1000 it might bite someone in the ass. But without modern communication pathways, we wouldn't have all these cool toys or long lives in which to buy more toys.
-=fshalor
How the same people that go and bitch about the RIAA labelling things as music piracy can turn around and embrace the same concept when it applies to the underdog rather than the establishment is beyond me.
Sure, one can say that it isn't fair that the RIAA gets away with it but Venezuela does not. That is 100% correct. But when one embraces the propaganda techniques of the enemy when it can be used to defend the underdogs serves nothing other than to discredit us. And not to mention, it does nothing to further the cause.
Best explanation I could think of as well.
I read this and said WTF?
then I read teh story and said WTF?
then I read your comment and said Ahhh!
-nB
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
I mean really though. If I were them I would be welcoming Google.
:P. Like they just sat around playing with cats and never leanred anything, rofl.
Increased interest in a project such as the Genome project would help, correct? And what is there to steal really? And who is going to care... I highly doubt that the kind of people who would download part of the Genome project and the people who download movies illegal are anywhere near the same breed. Sometimes I think people are just picking on Google, hehe. Google is simply going for their mission statement I suppose... I think it would be pretty crazy to have a public database of all of this shit. Haha, maybe the scientists don't really have anything anyways, and are doing this to cover it up
and yes, "bio-piracy" sounds like possibly the dumbest term to ever be filed against Google.
...
For all those saying "what the heck is wrong with giving it away", here's what biopiracy is all about.
The indigenous people of a region currently not well explored by scientists tend to know the uses of local plants and animals very well, they know what to take for a headache, or which frog not to eat etc. Then this happens:
1) scientists arrive, asking lots of questions.
2) scientists take lots of samples, then leave.
3) scientists patent the useful genetic material found.
4) PROFIT! (but just for the scientists, nothing for the people who told them where to look).
OK, so google isn't being this bad, but it is trying to exploit the knowledge of other people without paying for it.
One day, I won't be allowed to take a dump 'cause I forgot to renew the license to use my biological disposal unit.
Don't answer me. Moderate. Slashdot is about moderation, not discussion.
There are billions of years of prior art. And the argument that know one would research them otherwise is crap to... First to market in the drug world is the driving force. Even if... does that mean people can patent translated segments of ancient languages if they read them first? These people should cram grapes in their noses!
A web site about piracy using a literary character that might be copywrited thus themselves commiting an act of piracy?
Huh...and I thought patenting genes (including ones the appear in MY body) was the real example of biopiracy.
What Google is planning certainly isn't going to stifle innovation like gene patents will--for if lack of patents ever harmed research governments can and would supply funds for researchers.
They appear to be a bunch of lawyers trying to get a pay off from the pharmacuetical companies.
Not much new here, really.
Looks like one of the April fools stories slipped in a bit early.
People leave their DNA and finger prints wherever they go, and the law is clear that whatever you leave behind is up for grabs. Where is the piracy in making an online searchable database of public-domain information?
Yeah... genes shouldn't be private things (copyrighted by corporations), but I don't think they have to be hidden things (unresearched and unpublished). Google wants to make a public database. what's wrong with that? What's wrong with _any_ public proliferation of information about what's inside our bodies (speaking generically, I wouldn't want *my* exact genes being pubilshed next to my name and SSN)?
--TheOrangeSquid Is it any wonder things seem so awry? We swim in a sea of confusion and don't have to think to survive
Give me my genes back ! Thief ! Pir...flblbl (reduced as a soup of cells)
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
I suspect that they're associating Google with "piracy" because of the "theft of traditional knowledge" part of things. The question is, in how many of those cases did Google actually "steal" any of that knowledge? Isn't it more likely that Google is just making public knowledge that someone else has already "stolen"? In which case the award is not for Google having "stolen" the information, but rather for Google making public the results of the "theft" ? Would it really be better if the people who "stole" the information have exclusive and private use of that information??? (Yes, those are sneer quotes in that exact sense of the word.)
Bio-piracy is about taking from the poor and giving to the rich.
--Rob
Towards the Singularity.
You run your research lab based on facts from Google?
The first thing you learn, is the internet is not a reliable source of research information. Have fun on the day you do that google for how much bentonite to put into the beaker, and find out the paper you got it from on the internet was only a draft, not peer reviewed, and had a decimal point in the wrong place.
Google's motto, "Don't be Evil," may soon take a backseat to a new mission statement unveiled by CEO Eric Schmidt in early March 2006: "We want to be able to store everybody's information all the time."(9) Already causing concern over the way it uses (or could use) the vast amount of Google-user information it has collected and stored over the years, the company has now set the sights of its all-seeing eyes even higher. Google's massive computer power and cutting-edge data-mining capacity make it a logical partner for Venter and his ever-expanding collection of DNA samples taken from humans, animals and microbes that live in soil, sea and air. In The Google Story, the 2005 book by Mark Malseed and David A. Vise, Venter referred to the pairing of a giant search engine and massive amounts of genomic data as "the ultimate intersection of technology and health." Venter expects that the details of one's genetic code "should be broadly available through a service like Google within a decade."(10) Since the publication of The Google Story, however, Google has downplayed its role in the project, perhaps because the ethical issues related to genetic privacy are even stickier than the cyber-privacy issues currently bogging down the company.
Garrrrrr, the genes be MINE says I! Arrrrrrgh!
No matter how hot a girl is - some guy somewhere is sick of her shit.
This has got to be P.R. hooha. Somebody said: "How can we get some free P.R.? Lets attack somebody huge, pretend we are oppressed and maybe end up on slashdot..."
... from which many ethical and legal issues can and do arise.
By increasing the number of pirates they are contributing to reduce the global warming. I can't understand why those Brazilian green peace hippies are mad at them.
Sure, some craniorectally inverted companies have taken out patents on a plethora of genetic sequences, but whether they have any right to do so is another matter altogether.
Thank God For Google. They seem to be one of the few companies that actually gets the fact that information wants to be free. On top of which, it's just absolutely absurd that ANYONE other than God can get a patent on genetic sequences. It kind of reminds me of that old joke, "In order to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first make an apple." Anyone who can do that deserves to get the patent for the genetic sequence of an apple.
That's kind of like getting a patent for the number pi. That would actually be a good one. If you have the patent to the decimal sequence that makes up pi, you could really argue that you have a patent on everything, including every genetic sequence. Theoretically, pi will contain every conceivable sequence of digits somewhere in its infinitely long sequencey and thus, anything that can be encoded as a sequence of digits (movies, music, books, genes), can be found somewhere in pi. Therefore, the patent holder for pi is the patent holder for everything. QED.
Groups involved with the coalition include:
IPBN - Indigenous Peoples Biodiversity Network in Cusco, Peru
SEARICE - South East Asia Regional Inititiaves in Community Empowerment Philippines
ETC Group - Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration in Ottawa
Is that the best this organization is bringing? Why is this even news? Can anyone create a catchy name for an award, put it on a web page, and this then becomes real news? For crying out loud, those fakers even spelled "Initiatives" wrong. Not that my own spelling is great, but am I the only one that see how fake this is?
The Human Genome Project was a collaborative effort, largely funded by government and public sources. The agencies involved in the research, however, seem to have a vested interest in keeping the data private, even going so far as to patent genetic sequences (isn't there "prior art" for all of my DNA? I call them "parents"). Freely available information, while often valuable, has no resale value. Can this be the true cause of The "Coalition Against Biopiracy" issueing what seems more like a political slander campaign than a genuine warning of wrongdoing?
Perhaps we should ask:
IPBN - Indigenous Peoples Biodiversity Network
P.O. Box 567
Cusco, Peru
Phone: +51 84 24-5021
email: ipbn@web.net
SEARICE - South East Asia Regional Inititiaves in Community Empowerment
Unit 331, Eagle Court Condominium
26 Matalino Street, Central District
Diliman, Quezon City, Philippines
Phone: (63 2) 433-7182, 433-2067
Fax: (63 2) 922-6710
email: searice@searice.org.ph
web: http://www.searice.org.ph/
ETC Group - Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration
431 Gilmour St, Second Floor,
Ottawa, ON Canada K2P 0R5
Tel: 1(613)241-2267
Fax: 1(613)241-2506
email: etc@etcgroup.org
web: http://www.etcgroup.org/
Basically, Venter -- whose a shameless self-promoter, but nonetheless well accomplished because he's well funded and hires good people -- had an idea that he'd travel the world taking DNA samples from everything in sight to capture a broad view of biodiversity at the genetic level. The idea is that by doing so that we'd better be able to categorize genes, describe their function and evolution, etc. There's more than a few problems with that, but in true Venter style, he'd cross that bridge when he came to it.
While he travelled, he found out that not everyone thought this was a keen idea. It turns out that many people perceived (one could argue correctly) that a US company was out to make a buck by exploiting things specific to their community -- and if this was the case, they wanted a cut -- which he wasn't going to give, this is for the world scientific community! As a result, Venter was frequently required to throw away samples, forced out of certain areas, made to wipe the dirt off his shoes, etc.
If there's gold to be found in them there genetic hills, by God the locals ought to have dibs -- so the thinking goes. Now Google plans to make a giant database of it (well, truth be told, much of it already is public, they are simply going to add the magic Google touch, build services, and cull annotation around it). In theory, doing so would dilute the value of the information and prevent the locals from capitalizing on the information.
In a sense, it's a silly situation. The information in isolation has little probability of being useful. Even if it were, it's not likely anyone would ever be able to capitalize on it and turn a profit from it -- that's hard enough with genes that are well researched and have obvious commercial implications. And all that is predicated on the assumption that people own and have IP rights on all living matter in their own sphere of geopolitical influence. Further, we're talking about water samples, pollen, dirt -- stuff likely to be stuck to your clothes if you walk by.
Even if you are the Pope of the church of "intellectual property" and think every quark in a lizard's nut is patentable, I would think its a real stretch to call this "piracy".
In the spirit of these groups giving companies or agencies "report cards" or rating them on arbitrary lists of their choosing I hereby give the website an F. Maybe next time they can get a D+ it depends what letter grade appeals to me on that day.
As far as I'm concerned you could do that to me (aside from the SSN for other reasons).
I would kinda like to be "the genome guy"
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
As long as Google provides a sort button on the results, I've got no problems with it. There's no point in having to wade through the morons to get to the good ones.
Fake award staged, problem of "biopiracy" (as if that's even a word) invented in large conspiracy to make Slashdot's front page.
Help us build a better map!
Laugh me off if you want, but I am willing to bet that billions - that's BILLIONS - of human beings wouldn't be around today had not other human beings wantonly and freely copied and spread their genetic codes.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
A genetic database already exists, it's called Genbank, and has been around for about 20 years. What's news about this?
Ok! Being that I have several genes in my body, which I own thank you very much. I give google full permission to index these for others to search. You see people in Brazil - I own the genes in my body, fully. Google is not "pirating" anything.
Seriously they are blatantly publishing all kinds of gene information that our tax money has paid for. I mean what if the Canadians got their hands on all this precious data.
Unfortunately, for all Google's talk of being Open-Source/Free Software friendly, they either don't get, or, more likely, don't WANT to get, the need for openness of data formats. Google Video puts videos "online", and makes them searchable. However, if you can't cut up that video and use it in your own videoblog or cable tv show or artistic video montage, then it's really not "available" to you or to the online culture to build on. It might as well be playing behind glass in a shop window, even if you do pay for it.
And here I'm still trying to figure out why this is 1) piracy and why this 2) would be evil...
:-/
Since you obviously know, I wouldn't mind at least some elaboration.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
For those unaware, you can currently browse the genome libraries: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genome/guide/human/re
You can even do BLAST searches: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genome/seq/BlastGen/Bl astGen.cgi?taxid=9606
What will Google and Venter bring to this approach, I wonder? A faster search algorithm? I don't see how it could be more open, but it might be made more accessible--maybe. The genome is a complicated thing, and it probably requires the interpretation of scientific minds to make much of the implications of a particular sequence.
--
$tar -xvf
This sounds a lot like Gattaca (Movie).
People runnig around to little booths that decode one's genome and allow them to know if a possible mate is adequate, and in some cases "good enough for you". I see the advantages, but soon we will be having matching sites based on your "Personal and Genetic Compatibilities!"
I am a researcher and I have been following for quite some time all the effort to obtain genomes (human and non-human). One of the main concerns in the communities was that since some companies were carrying out private efforts to sequence some genomes, all that data would be lost to people who do research in public institutions. Luckily, this has not been so, and we are all able to benefit from a lot o priceless information. Google efforts to make available the genomes is not something new, you can already have access to that information (NCBI, EMBL, TIGR,...). Now, if by bio-piracy you are referring to getting a hold of the genomes of indigenous populations, my point of view is that any human genome is a patrinome of humanity (at least as it is anonymous). All these conspirations theories will not be worsened by any of google efforts (besides, most of them are bollocks).
If anything, google will take an already existing public resource and make it easier to digest and search. If anything, it will increase the ability for people to get their work done.
NCBI [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/%5D has this database for years, where everyone can search for genes, proteins, etc. Will you be able to do Google search for a gene on the Google web site instead of doing BLAST search?
Google's too late on this one, It's already been done. Go to ncbi.nlm.nih.gov or expasy.org
I also notice that biologists have had awesome search tools figured out before google got famous for theirs.
Quite simple. Because those genes are taken from natively Brazilian plants and animals, used abroad for research then patented. So, if a local small industry decides they want to use that plant for something (a native plant) they must pay royalties to a corporation from a FOREIGN COUNTRY, usually a country where such plants/animals don't exist.
That's what they classify as bio-piracy. Steal native elements from a country and patent them as a property of your corporation, then sell it back to that very country or charge for royalties.
There's a silly assumption here in Brazil that the USA is "evil". And let me be clear about this: the assumption is that each and every thing made by Americans is "evil", be it in politics (no matter whether Republicans or Democratic), in commerce, or even in international charity efforts. Furthermore, this "USA is evil" view is backed by Brazilian big media, which covers with richness of detail everything bad about USA that appears on USA's own big media (New York Times, Washington Post, Newsweek etc.), while dismissing or at most publishing in footnote size everything good, plus lots of conspiracy theories made by ourselves. One example of these theories is that lots of Brazilians believe that USA wants to conquer the Amazon Forest and so will, sooner or later, have marines invading Brazil from Colombia...
The end result of this nonsense are news such as the one published above. See the pattern: Google is an USA corporation, so it is evil by itself. Also, it is "obviously" serving USA's interest in Amazon's richness by providing this information. As a side note, this also "proves" (to those who believe in the idea, of course) that the future marines invasion is on the horizon. Go figure...
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
and I quote: "With their knowledge of mans simple protein based bodies they inflicted great suffering"
I guess it's only a matter of time before Google founds it's own city called 01.
In the not too distant future, next Sunday A.D.
so if i laughed my ass clean off, would that be monopolization of "genetic resources" or "culture taken from people...that...nurtured those resources"?
"If you've ever used a penny, the government has your DNA. Why do you think they keep them in circulation?"
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
In my pants.
[Apologies. Crude, but I couldn't pass up the opportunity.]
Slashdot really needs a way to moderate articles, so that when a mountain of readers can immediately see it's a bunch of crap, we can just kick it off the homepage and the people subscribing to the daily newsletter don't have to even sit through yet another dumb article.
Give us the ability to kick nonsense like this off the front page!
But Google doesn't patent that material. It only creates a database of what is known.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Vincent: There's no gene for fate.
"You're everywhere. You're omnivorous."
I, for one, am glad to see that Google is joining the ranks of pirates. I see this more as a pro-active protection against the dangers of global warming. As we all know we have scientific evidence that global warming is inversely proportional to the number of pirates on the planet, so any additional pirates that we have is extra security for our polar ice caps.
I am glad to see that Google has finally been touched by His noodley appendage.
RAmen
-- The Genesis project? What's that?
why do you think a corporation from usa would have as a motto "Don't be evil"? ;)
go figure
they would never patent genes now would they ?, or maybe those Sillicon valley Bio tech companies that are busy patenting our genes as fast as they can to stop others from researching or producing products based on them
but prior art will conquer all, after all it worked in the software world right ?
Yes. Maybe the 'Captain Hook' award means "if you help someone who probably steals native resources from our country and call 'em their own, you are a pirate as well". Although that looks childish IMO.
What do all these searchable charts have in common?
Periodic Table
Protien Family
Acidic/Alkalinity
Ionization Excitement
DNA strand markers
All are tools in which we make our stepping stones into a better or worse life for us and others (not always in that order).
If worsen quality of life can be had, then it becomes an issue of "scientific terrorism" and it should be controlled (however fluid it may be).
If it improves the quality of our life, then it is "scientific knowledge."
I'm ok with Bio-piracy of DNA until someone comes along and "worsen" things for humanity. Take "target DNA elimination" for example. Can anyone say bio-ethnic cleansing and getting rid of cancer-causing cells in the same sentence, yet?
This was a good response, thought you shouldn't have posted as AC. And the mod shouldn't have modded ya down.
/.'eans persist in attacking comments which aren't fully explained. I seem to be plauged with it.
... I couldn't believe they had the students cutting the power on before they had the cooling water flowing. (Even though it states clearly in the manual that the water should be checked before the power is turned on.)
Why do
There is a *lot* of information you can get from reading any single article, website, response, etc. But any engineer worth his/her degree would *never* rely on one source. Even stuff you see in peer reviewed articles can be wrong. (I've seen it!)
However, there is something to be learned even from the wrong article. Sure, I didn't go into this in my comment. I'm sorry I assumed that my point would come across without an explanation.
An example:
Looking up laser howtos the other day for revitalizing our laser lab. Was googleing for hints and docs about a few Spectra Physics argon ion lasers. (Series 2000 and a Stabilitte 2011). One of the first startup procedures I found for the 2000 was from a college graduate student physics lab.
I had to ignore the startup (and shut down too, since that was even worse.) but the howto had one of the clearest tuning procedures I've seen for getting a dummy to safely align the laser.
Should I condem google for providing me with a howto that could result in an incident if there was a water leak? No. I could only blame myself for being stupid.
-=fshalor
How about Do know evil?
Google making genomic databases -- I can't hardly imagine something better happening. Working as postdoc in bioinformatics, I know of the many problems the current databases have. Google's approach in creating friendly, resourceful interfaces would be a real novum.
...silly. The bulk of genomic, transcriptomic, genetic, proteomic and generally, biological data is freely available and accessible. Most of the data can be accessed through such databases as NCBI/Genbank, Swissprot/TrEMBL, Ensembl etc. (and nobody accuses NCBI from the National Institute of Health of biopiracy for providing their magnificent service!).
Of course, the accusation of biopiracy is just
However, one of the largest problems in bioinformatics is nowadays not the data availability, but data integration, processing, analysis. It's not about lack of computing power, either; rather -- lack of reasonable approaches, algorithms etc. A simple thing like a Google database service could seriously improve data mining. If you have any doubts, see how well google scholar works -- compared to the so much more complicated and powerful NCBI Pubmed interface.
January
It is a waste of time to address this seriously, this has to be an April Fool's day joke.
I just hope I don't share any genes with those people.
Actually, genes are not copyrighted. You can patent genes though, even if there's allegely a prior art of a billion years, and you don't even need to create new genes to patent them, you merely need to "discover" them.
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
This is a classic example of pure PR with no content whatsoever.
'Biopiracy', as a popular term on south america refers to big pharma companies exploring the forests here and going on a patent spree, to the point of making indigenous concotions an infringement. Now that is just crazy for the locals, and is a valid complex issue of globalization and all that.
Biopiracy as in TFA, ill be damned if I know what it means. They've taken the 'piracy' buzzword plus the 'bio' part just for that extra hi-tech coolness and then went around saying nonsense against a Google service.
I think pharma industries are going against the free database AND discrediting controversial issues at the same time. Thats genius, evil genius, at its best.
I think they definitely attacked Google on this for publicity purposes, after all we wouldn't be discussing "biopiracy" if Google hadn't won. But if you review their list, most of their claims of biopiracy seem pretty valid. They're referring to companies and individuals commiting legal acts of piracy: taking genetic material, in some cases cultivated for thousands of years by indigenous peoples, and claiming it for their own. It turns the piracy model of copyright infringement on its head and accuses the rights-owners of stealing from the users. Is it it publicity stunt? Yes. Does Google belong on this list? Maybe not. But it got me interested in a dangerous trend...
First, I can see very well why personal genetic information including "Which genes does John Doe have?" shouldn't be put online and would very well be a serious infringement (sp?) of privacy, but it still has nothing to do with piracy.
Second, I admit I have no knowledge whatsoever regarding genetics, but logically there is a small (read: huge) difference between putting someone's genetic information online and putting genetic information online. When you put someone's genetic information online the entire world can read his profile and see what diseases or flaws he or she might have or, like someone said here earlier, make an online matchmaking service based around genetic compatibility. When you put genetic information online, the entire world can retrieve information regarding a certain gene and that would still be quite useless for anything other than scientific or medical purposes.
That has nothing to do with privacy, since it's a GENE, it's not YOUR gene or MY gene, it's just a gene in general and what it does. Sure, patented things might not go into the database, but I still see no connection whatsoever between an online genetic database search through google, piracy, privacy and/or evilness.
So, like it has been said a few posts earlier - April Fools came early this year? ;)
Yes, I'm another bored teenager.
I pirated my parents' genes.
They should have used DRM.
What a stupid article.
I'm sorry. The number you have reached is imaginary. Please rotate your phone 90 degrees and try again.
Now everyone who uses any of my biochemical pathways owes me money.
Hey! You! Stop breathing! I own your lungs!
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Except that maybe there should be privacy laws in place that forbid a potential future employer, e.g., to screen your DNA.
Funny just today a coworker at the place where I'm doing work for my diploma told how some company where he likes to work wants a few sentences of him written by hand, allegedly to analyse his handwriting for character traits, or whatever... now, isn't that stupid. Did any of you hear s.th. like this before?
Another one jokingly said, if they would use it to do some DNA profiling at least there might be some scientific foundation to it.
How long until the first health insurance company will request a DNA sample from you, so they can reject you or ask for a higher monthly rate based on their risk calculations...
Google stole my brain cells! Er wait.... Google stole my genes! Er that's not it...
(Honestly, will the media give up trying to find something wrong with Google already? I've heard of identity theft, but this is rediculus.)
Why use the word "steal" here, though? Are these organisms being smuggled out of the country, or at they being legitimately and legally removed for study? If the latter, anyone accusing them of theft (or piracy) is just rabble-rousing. There may be some legitimate cause for concern regarding local economies, here, but neither piracy nor theft is occurring. And tarring Google with this is doubly asinine.
If it were like genes "belong" to a man ;-) Time to sue mother and father for the bad genes they gave! It's a bio-fraud! Seems like in US it's gonna happen soon.
My only issue with this position is this:
Plant "A" sits in country "B" forever.
Because they can't make a profit off of it, BigEvilCo doesn't spend a dime finding out plant "A"'s benefits.
As a result, people in country "B" have no need to pay for the plant, because they still think it is a useless weed. So they die, or are obese, or go blind, because they were so bloody careful about protecting "their" property that no one wanted to develop it in the first place.
---
I agree that BigEvilCo is being slimy and the people of Country "B" need a cut of the action. I agree that the people of Country "B" have the right to deny BigEvilCo's any ability to develop the resources in Country "B". I don't agree that they can wait until those resources are developed and -then- call foul after BEC has invested cash in developing a product.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
The problem here is not google but the US government for giving patents on things that should be considered as public domain. This is especially poignant when the research for some new drug used native knowledge in its discovery in the first place. THIS IS PRIOR ART!
This is all part of modern day imperialism. Google may actually help in countering this as the information may be considered as prior art (although i wouldn't get your hopes up), especially if (non-interested) researchers document the possible application of something prior to the patent application. Especially if the native knowledge is also disclosed.
The other problem here is that the US gets involved in the IP issues against third world countries and often forces them to accept the patents as valid. The US government should allow other nations decide what their local view of these things are and whether these patents are valid. (Actually the US government has no business putting its nose in their business anyway.) The US pay for verdict court system should not be enforcable worldwide.
You seem to imply that the two parts to this are somehow contradictory to each other, or at least incongruous. But keep in mind that the fact that something's online for free (beer) doesn't mean that it's unencumbered by IP issues. The best example is the US Patent Office online patent database; you can search it for free, but you sure as hell can't use the inventions described therein for free.
I'm still reading up on this, but I think the biopiracy problems with the proposed Google database are the following:
- By putting all this information online for free, it makes it easier for biopirates to do their deed. It will become much easier to collect all the supporting information needed to put together a patent application.
- By putting all this genome data online, one denies the people who provided it from having a say and/or financially benefitting from their knowledge. If we allow biopatents (and that is a big "if," I know), then other cultures' bioproperty and bioknowledge acquire an economic value they don't have otherwise. The argument then is that it's unjust to stiff them out of this value without their informed consent, even if you don't profit from the information yourself.
Really, the notion of informed consent that I highlighted is central. One core moral vice involved in biopiracy is obtaining materials and knowledge from other people through uninformed consent. You and your buddy go on a trip to the Amazon, hang out with some tribe, gain their trust, and you askl them to give you a bunch of plant samples and explain their medicinal uses. You, of course, intend to go back home and sell the samples and notes to a big company, which will patent them.In order to make an informed decision on what to give you, the natives need to know all that you know about the patentability and value of the knowledge and material you're asking from them. However, this is exactly the information that you will hold from them.
Are you adequate?
... BULLSHIT and post an article on that!
I am. Lower your shields and power down your weapons, they are useless. Your biological and technological distinctivenes
This is simply not true. Particpants in the Human Genome project were required to publish their sequence data in the public NCBI databases within a couple days of obtaining it. The folks at Celera (the private genome effort) initially kept a large portion of their data private, but later made all it public.
Because those genes are taken from natively Brazilian plants and animals
Most likely exported legally, from the laws of that country.
So, if a local small industry decides they want to use that plant for something (a native plant) they must pay royalties
Well small local industries are usually not worth the time/money to sue. And if they did use a local native plant with traditional applications there is always prior art. I don't much like drug patents. But going against them because 'it was developed from a local plant' is a poor way, especially when the government, i.e. the country, allowed export for whatever use. The fact that it's a foreign country doesn't bother me. What if it was a plant that grew in Argentina on the border with Chile, would it matter that it was developed within Argentina's borders even if the Argentinan owned research plant were far far away, rather than a start up a couple of miles into Chila? Even more so, what about ethnic nationality claims to items within a country?
Steal native elements from a country Nothing has been stolen. It has been exported with the country's consent. If it was barred from export then the country could resist patents bases upon it.
This entire point is moot, however. Google offer a way of searching what is presently available, would one prefer that knowledge to be stuck further in the hands of an oligopoly of drug manufacturers?
How can creating a search engine be...
Biopiracy refers to the "monopolisation of genetic resources" according to the show's organisers. It is also defined as the unauthorised use of biological resources by organisations such as corporations, universities and governments.
According to their website:
Google Inc.
For teaming up with J. Craig Venter to create a searchable online database of all the genes on the planet so that individuals and pharmaceutical companies alike can 'google' our genes - one day bringing the tools of biopiracy online.
Bringing the tools of biopiracy online? Biopiracy is a matter of law and legislation, not technology. There is potential for harm, but cars, guns, and the internet come to mind...
The award for Info-Piracy goes to Al Gore for funding projects that helped create the internet, which allows a select few access to vast amounts of scientific, political, and current-event, knowledge, giving them an essential monopoly on all information on the planet.
I wonder if we'll have Geno-Porn in the future.
sorry, i have been out of it for a while, but i guess this means the whole debate over whether or not a gene that i and every other person on earth has can be patented turned up saying it could?
Maybe google should at last start producing data instead of only gain advantage of other's people hard work and creativity ?
Uh-huh. And what matter all of the patented genomic sequences if Google publishes them?
Put another way . . . if all this data is already considered public domain, why the fuss about Google publishing it? Can you suggest a better motive than profit for such an activity, or is there a simpler explanation than greed?
Occam's razor - for the best shave of your life, or your money back!
Why should ANYONE be allowed to patent genes? This means that instead of you know..patening the process..not only will we have to pay a ton of money to get that nasty cystic fibrosis gene changed to a normal copy, we'll have to pay a ton because someone 'owns' the normal copy!
Since everyone has the chemicals required to make the gene somewhere in their bodies, the real fee will probably be with licencing. You know..you want to correct this gene in people? Fine, $100,000 a person. Don't like it? Tell them to get insurance.
Thus, our insurance rates rise 200% overnight.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
The RIAA will begin copyrighting genetic sequences and sueing all those with DNA similar to their artist's for copyright infringement.
(I admit to not understanding the patent system at all - and for things like genes even less.)
Then I look at the moderation of the comment and I say WTF?
What the hell does that even mean? If I understand correctly, "bio-" means "animals", and "piracy" means "stealing".
So Google is stealing animals.
Back home we call that rustlin', pardner.
No. People accuse MS of making shit. Big difference, that.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
If I were Disney, I'd be suing their asses off. Captain Hook's value needs to be defended from this copyright infringement.
Smuggled from Amazon through illegal exploitation of the rain forest, mainly. But, indeed, blaming Google for it isn't a smart move.
Biopiracy? I didn't know that genes were copyrighted works...
Most likely exported legally, from the laws of that country.
Usually not. There is lots of bribery and smuggling going on, sometimes even inside our not-so-clean government.
But then, this is a quite problematic subject which has discussed just for a short time then forgotten by the media - and even then it wasn't even discussed by they big networks. Exploitation of the rain forest is a problem that has been long known altough ignored by the majority. Those who could do something about it are simply too busy getting their pockets full.
But, indeed. I failed to touch on the main subject of this article. Blaming Google for such an issue is as valid as blaming eBay for the Oil market issues.
Finally, I will be able to clone Natasha Henstridge and have her for myself!
All those companies who claim to own a piece of my genes are pirates. Last I checked, I own me and nobody else can, but these companies think that my DNA should have a little patent number on each little segment of it. What gives them the right to claim ownership of my DNA? Especially as it's got one hell of a public domain, prior art history behind it.
Now all Google is doing, is trying to make that public domain information accessable to the people. That's perfectly fine in my book.
You are conflating multiple issues. As far as I understand matters, simple sequence data is not patentable, any more then value for the pH of water, or the molecular weight of hydrogen is patenable. You must come up with a function for the sequence to make it patenable. Patents have been granted for fairly idiotic functions, like using the sequence as a probe to detect the itself in assays, but this it still a separate issue from publishing sequence data.
Considered nothing. Go to NCBI or UCSC Genome Browser. There it all is, help yourself. Why there is a fuss about it is beyond me.
Ignorance, or a desire to attract public attention by using high-profile buzz words.
We know Google has a long and glorious future ahead of it, for the Flying Spaghetti Monster protects pirates as his own.
DYWYPI?
Because, as trhe gospels tell us, the more pirates there are in the world, the cooler the average global temperature.
May you be Touched by His Noodly Appendage...
I think you've more or less hit it, but I think they're contention goes farther:
They're obliquely claiming that that genetic information belongs to the people who live in the area that the plants/animals live and so therefore giving it away for free is also "piracy."
Why use the word "steal" here, though?
Because they take something away from people and lock it for their exclusive use.
It's like stealing land, but with life forms instead of dirt.
It is not like 'stealing music', because illegal copies do not deprive the owners from the initial product, nor from the use of the initial product for profit purposes (they can still sell it to land lubbers even if pirates took their booty without shelling out their bullions).
You can't take the sky from me...
Actually, I'd say it's a *lot* more like stealing music than land. (An analogy isn't invalid just because it makes *you* look bad.) No one is depriving the Brazilians of their native species, after all.
The key difference being that there's no obvious ownership associated any natural species's genetic code. (This is quite apart from saying that companies and researchers shouldn't work with the native people and pass along some of the rewards. "Should" and "must" are two very different concepts, though.)
If you could use a plant and then are denied the use of that plant then somebody has taken something away from you. That's stealing.
evil is as evil does
... Open Source :-)
Bugfixing anyone?
Actually, I'd say it's a *lot* more like stealing music than land. [...] No one is depriving the Brazilians of their native species, after all.
Yes they fucking are!
Maybe not brazilians per se, but go and look for info on gene patents and basmati rice: U.S. companies ARE trying to -steal- other culture's traditional crops.
You can't take the sky from me...
I heard of such things before, I can't recall any details, but there was a big case about companies collecting some plants from some rain forest and using it on some medicine, then some native brazilians (endians) sued because they wanted a piece of the profit, as the stuff was patented. That's an annoying problem here in Brazil, and there's even lots of supposed "not-for-profit" foreign organizations, usually located in the north region, like Amazon, created to "help poor people of the region", but actually just ilegally collect and export plants & animals for exportation. Some also gives some money to native brazilians so they keep quiet while the organization does some mining in the region.
Native brazilians, like native americans, got screwed pretty badly since colonization, so there are some laws to "protect" them nowaways. Of course, none of this actually work, but they're granted some areas to live in and they can do pretty much anything in there, and recently people are becoming woried about they letting foreigners do in those areas things that would usually be ilegal.
Back to the topic, seems like the whole deal is that they're worried that such "evil foreign companies" make big money by patenting stuff from Brazilian plants and not paying anything to anyone in Brazil. Now, someone correct me if I'm wrong, but how Google is helping anyone by making information available for free? Can anyone actually get a patent for something that everyone knows about already? I think they're worried that, instead of "big evil foreign company" making big money from anything, so they can at least sue and try to get some of this money too, the stuff won't get patented by anyone, so no brazilian organization will get any money from royalties from those "big evil foreign companies".
Also, who gives such "awards"? I wouldn't be surprised if it's just a bunch of crackpots from the southern region of Brazil. Call me a troll if you want, but if you ever actually met enough people from the south, you'd probably know what I mean. I live in Brazil, and I can tell your, if you think in America and UK politicans seem to enjoy passing laws to screw the average citizen, it's no different here.
The overall cause is fair, ensuring companies don't patent natural products that are already in use, denying the original discoverers the use of that product and the rest of us cheap access to those produtcs.
Google's skinny BA's do wonder off a bit into the whole "do no evil" means no matter what they do, by definition because it is google it is not evil (the odd bit of patent pilfering, ah la M$, hmm), but in this particular instance google is funding a worthwhile cause, which is creating a database of all genomes for public use (various species, genus etc.), not creating a database of every human's individual genetic sequence.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
This is especially poignant when the research for some new drug used native knowledge in its discovery in the first place. THIS IS PRIOR ART!
What normaly happens is the researchers take the native remedy, analyse it to find the active ingrediants, test the ingrediants to find the ones that are responsible for the main effect. Then they invent a way to synthesise the main active ingrediant and patent that, frequently they synthesise artificial analogs and test them to find chemicals with a stronger effects and patent these treatments.
using the tribal remedy for the purpose intended is prior art;
making the active ingrediant artificaly is not prior art;
make new active ingrediants is not prior art!
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
It seems that they are trying but not necessarily succeeding:
http://www.patent.gov.uk/about/ippd/faq/biofaq.htm
But an American company has obtained a patent for "basmati" rice?
Can the discovery of DNA and the Human Genome be patented?
Gene-based inventions involve material which already occur in nature and can therefore under no circumstances be invented, only discovered?
But we should remain ever vigilant.
When they came for the communists, I said "He's next door. Take him away. Goddam commies."
I agrree. Steal is not appropriate. The bio corporations are just trying to charge the farmers for using their own traditional crops, not stealing their physical seeds so they are no longer available to them.
The whole labelling around this is dumb*. In the current scenario, I think it's logical the farmers be called the "bio-pirates", who are infringing on the (bogus) intellectual property rights of the corporations. This fits more with the standard understanding of the terms (and then we can get into real arguments about prior art, etc).
I think we should be supporting these "bio-pirate" farmers in their plight against the evil "bio-extortion" corporations - which I think is a much better label... or perhaps somthing that means "go out and sequence as much genetic stuff you can and then try to prevent others from using not just the sequence data but also the actual organism itself" or something. Even something simple like "bio-squatter" makes a bit more sense to me, as a non-biochemist/geneticist/etc. Anyway, the whole thing is sickening and stupid, and warrants international attention. I just wish they'd use better labels.
* Similar "bio-dynamic" and "organic" in relation to food... that used to shit me no-end, but I've come to accept it.
Who is denying anyone use of a while species of plant and what court is upholding such an absurd IP claim?
All available genetic data (and protein data) from every sequenced organism has always been publicly available. Whether it's due to requirements by publishers of the journals that they publish their analysis in, a requirement of their funding agencies, or for the mere goal of sharing their data with the global scientific community.
Gene sequence databases have been around since 1981:
EMBL: http://www.ebi.ac.uk/embl/
GenBank: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/
DDBJ: http://www.ddbj.nig.ac.jp/
HUGO: http://www.gene.ucl.ac.uk/nomenclature/
JGI: http://www.jgi.doe.gov/
Protein sequence/structure data is also publicly available:
Expasy: http://ca.expasy.org/
PDB: http://www.pdb.org/
Their statement "Google is guilty of biopiracy because a searchable database could make it easier for private genetic information to be abused" is flawed on many levels.. and is merely an attempt at media hype.
A - If the genetic data is private (ie. industry funded and not shared with the global scientific community), how will Google get access to it?
B - Searchable databases that contain private/public genetic information have existed since before most other types of searchable databases.
C - Sharing data from biological analyses (whether genetic sequence data, protein sequence data, gene expression data, protein structure data, etc.) is an important aspect of understanding the underlying mechanisms of biological systems.
Many of the medical advances that we've seen these past couple decades have resulted directly from the fact that biological data has been publicly available... facilitating collaborations beyond borders and beyond disciplines.
I look forward to Google's role in facilitating access to this information, and look forward to applying it in future research projects.
Ryan
"IBM and the Holocaust : The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation"
by Edwin Black
Paperback: 560 pages
Publisher: Three Rivers Press; Reprint edition (March 26, 2002)
ISBN: 0609808990
Robert
"Why do /.'eans persist in attacking comments which aren't fully explained. I seem to be plauged with it."
/. have two copies of the pedantic gene. From my point of view the internet has been an absolute boon to research, enabling fast and accurate answers that would have required an army of librarians 20yrs ago. Two categories of people disagree.
/.'eans are in this category.
Many here on
1. Experts in their field who don't have a clue how to turn on a computer. EG: Many GP's are in this category.
2. People who can turn on a computer but are absolutely clueless about how to research a question. EG: Many
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Now hand over ye germplasm or we keel haul ye!!
Prior Art
-BMojo
You and many others in this forum are arguing a form of 'Manifest Domain.' Because the ignorant savages aren't fully using their resources/knowledge in the way that Western Civilization wants them used, they should be taken away.
That's a pretty workable solution for taking away land from indigenous cultures. It worked pretty well to steal the Native (north) Americans' land.
Basically, it can be translated to modern terms as a 'gimme that stuff, you aren't using it right' claim to somebody else's property.
Which is a pretty ugly human tendency.
I wonder if google will serve gene related adsense ads. Anyone for a higher IQ?
The Captain Hook Award to Google in the category of "worst threat to genetic privacy," has attracted some strong reaction. A few people have written in Google's defense, claiming that Google isn't a biopirate and that the Coalition Against Biopiracy is wrong to name them. They argue that it isn't biopiracy because Google will not be patenting the genomic information they will be storing -- and, since anyone can access the information, its not monopolistic. They point out that this approach is actually anti-monopolistic because the genomic information would be freely available to everyone. And if genomic information is easily available, Google's defenders point out, it is more likely to facilitate the discovery of cures and new medical breakthroughs.
Here's our response:
First, the award wasn't for 'biopiracy' it was specifically for posing a 'threat to genetic privacy'. Even if Google makes all the genomic data it holds anonymous -- it is still possible to identify an individual's data by genetic fingerprinting. On Google Video, Google has a video of an internal talk on genomic databases where the speaker admits this is a big potential problem, and a troubling issue that Google is going to face in the future.
But whether or not genomic information is available for free or not is not the point - the important point is that it would facilitate access without consent. When you download a document from the internet (via Google) you have the implied consent of the person who posted it to that public space that it is now for common use - this is enough because this is only data and not much more - it is not as personal as an individual's genomic information. By contrast when you access somebody's genomic data you need to have explicit consent because this is something very personal that has an important bearing on their identity, health, right-to-privacy, personhood etc. Access to an individual's genomic information -- in the wrong hands -- opens up possibilities of discrimination in the workplace, for example. If Google makes all personal genomic data available for anyone to use it is also making that available to profit-making enterprises -- and it's not clear how they could put in place an adequate consent mechanism to do this. This data is not Google's to redistribute (and it shouldn't even be Craig Venter's). It is also misleading to think that this data is going to be freely and equally available to everyone, because only certain specialized knowledge enterprises have the ability to make use of such data, and, by and large they are private, for-profit and they won't re-distribute a penny back to the people whose genomic information they are using. Genomic information is not like software code and it's wrong to compare them -- it belongs very personally to individuals. When you use or distribute that information without explicit consent, there is a victim. The 2005 Captain Hook Award to Google is intended to raise questions and concerns about a future threat to genetic privacy. We believe these issues need public attention and should be widely debated to forestall the most dangerous and socially harmful scenarios.
The Coalition Against Biopiracy also received a few complaints about naming Craig Venter as a recipient of one of this year's Captain Hook Awards. We believe he's quite deserving. Go here for more background on Venter's 2004 global expedition to collect microbial biodiversity:
http://www.etcgroup.org/article.asp?newsid=442
http://www.etcgroup.org/article.asp?newsid=473
Venter is the flamboyant scientist who first grabbed headlines back in 1991. While employed at NIH, part of the US government's Human Genome Project, when he filed for US patents on thousands of gene sequences from the human brain.
Venter's global expedition to collect microbial diversity challenges national sovereignty and raises more doubts about the already problematic acce