Eh didn't mosanto seed crops of competitors fields with their specific GMO brand crop and then sue those people for "stealing" them? They've done some bad shit.
IIRC the farmer in that case didn't buy the GMO (specifically the herbicide-resistant strain) seeds and his neighbors did. When it came time to end the harvest, the first farmer noticed that all but a few of his plants died to the herbicide (the ones near the fence), put two and two together, and started planting only the seeds from those plants. I believe this went on for about two years or so.
The neighbors, pissed, (the seed licenses cost $TEXAS) ratted him out and Monsanto came in and said "hey, you seem to be planting our plants, we'll call it even if you buy the license or stop planting that seed". Farmer refused and got sued.
But they really do charge a ton of money for those seed agreements, and they're partly responsible for the rise of herbicide resistant weeds in the First World.
So... pay Monsanto, or your neighbors poison your crops? At that point it's practically protection money. "That's some nice corn you have. Shame if something were to happen to it..."
I'm not sure if you're being intentionally obtuse. He specifically only replanted seeds from the plants he knew/heavily suspected were GM. He did this for a couple years, specifically to weed out any non GM plants in his harvest, so he could get the GM plants without paying for them in any way. When he was discovered, he was asked to pay/buy seeds like normal going forward, or stop doing it. He did neither.
The point is that this behavior isn't stealing. It's the entire history of agricultural cultivation. Of fucking course you replant the shit that works best.
It's not his fault. It's not even Monsanto's fault, really. It this stupid idea that you can own the genetic structure of a self replicating organism in the first place. And while I don't know if I'd say that's exactly evil, it can't find a single reason to think it's a good idea.
Yes, it really, really is. The digital equivalent would be if someone found a burned CD on the ground, proceeded to burn a ton of copies, sold them, and then claimed he had the right to sell them because the original was their property.
Um, I don't think there's a digital equivalent to stuff like pollination and such. Or if there is... that sure as hell ain't it.
How is it the farmer's fault that his crop on his property caught this strain, all without any action on his part? How would he even known they caught that strain in the first place?
I'm not even a farmer, and I think I can figure out one of the main tenants of replanting. If you have two plants, and one died while the other lived, you use the seeds from the one that lived to plant more. I can figure this out because it has another more popular name. Survival of the fittest.
Again, he didn't get in trouble for it spreading. He got in trouble for taking actions to isolate the GMO, reproduce only it, and then sell it. What part about that isn't clear?
By "isolate the GMO" you mean "took the seeds from the potatoes that didn't die and used them to plant more potatoes".
And again, how would he have even known for sure they lived specifically because of this GMO?
The way you word it, he used his chemistry set in the barn to extract and steal the GMO. Which as absurd as that is, were it even remotely how it happened, you might have a point. Or even if he took the low tech approach of jumping his neighbor's fence and stealing his crops directly. Instead he just replanted his own crops.
"The sausage of Green Earth explodes with flavor like the cannon of culinary delight."
There's lots of better arguments than "How could he have known????". I'm pretty sure he knew. It wouldn't take a lot of thinking to figure that one out.
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JuliusCaptain of Serenityon my shipRegistered Userregular
Eh didn't mosanto seed crops of competitors fields with their specific GMO brand crop and then sue those people for "stealing" them? They've done some bad shit.
IIRC the farmer in that case didn't buy the GMO (specifically the herbicide-resistant strain) seeds and his neighbors did. When it came time to end the harvest, the first farmer noticed that all but a few of his plants died to the herbicide (the ones near the fence), put two and two together, and started planting only the seeds from those plants. I believe this went on for about two years or so.
The neighbors, pissed, (the seed licenses cost $TEXAS) ratted him out and Monsanto came in and said "hey, you seem to be planting our plants, we'll call it even if you buy the license or stop planting that seed". Farmer refused and got sued.
But they really do charge a ton of money for those seed agreements, and they're partly responsible for the rise of herbicide resistant weeds in the First World.
So... pay Monsanto, or your neighbors poison your crops? At that point it's practically protection money. "That's some nice corn you have. Shame if something were to happen to it..."
I'm not sure if you're being intentionally obtuse. He specifically only replanted seeds from the plants he knew/heavily suspected were GM. He did this for a couple years, specifically to weed out any non GM plants in his harvest, so he could get the GM plants without paying for them in any way. When he was discovered, he was asked to pay/buy seeds like normal going forward, or stop doing it. He did neither.
The point is that this behavior isn't stealing. It's the entire history of agricultural cultivation. Of fucking course you replant the shit that works best.
It's not his fault. It's not even Monsanto's fault, really. It this stupid idea that you can own the genetic structure of a self replicating organism in the first place. And while I don't know if I'd say that's exactly evil, it can't find a single reason to think it's a good idea.
Yes, it really, really is. The digital equivalent would be if someone found a burned CD on the ground, proceeded to burn a ton of copies, sold them, and then claimed he had the right to sell them because the original was their property.
Um, I don't think there's a digital equivalent to stuff like pollination and such. Or if there is... that sure as hell ain't it.
How is it the farmer's fault that his crop on his property caught this strain, all without any action on his part? How would he even known they caught that strain in the first place?
I'm not even a farmer, and I think I can figure out one of the main tenants of replanting. If you have two plants, and one died while the other lived, you use the seeds from the one that lived to plant more. I can figure this out because it has another more popular name. Survival of the fittest.
Again, he didn't get in trouble for it spreading. He got in trouble for taking actions to isolate the GMO, reproduce only it, and then sell it. What part about that isn't clear?
Your digital equivalent is still wrong though. What he sold was the yield of the plants. The digital equivalent would be pirating a copy of adobe photoshop and selling the art you make with it. Or like installing pirated Windows on the computers at your company.
There's lots of better arguments than "How could he have known????". I'm pretty sure he knew. It wouldn't take a lot of thinking to figure that one out.
Then the implication of that is that the herbicide has a 100% fatality rate on non-GMO crops, because that's the only conceivable reason some of his crops survived.
Which means holy fuck that really is a protection racket. "Buy our crops, or fuck your crops."
"The sausage of Green Earth explodes with flavor like the cannon of culinary delight."
roundup does have a 100% fatality rate on non-gmo crops (or it did, things are getting resistant), that lets farmers just spray whole fields quickly and only leave your crop alive.
But it's not like farmers are going around spraying others fields, that would be expensive and pointless, why would you waste herbicide on your neighbour?
roundup does have a 100% fatality rate on non-gmo crops (or it did, things are getting resistant), that lets farmers just spray whole fields quickly and only leave your crop alive.
But it's not like farmers are going around spraying others fields, that would be expensive and pointless, why would you waste herbicide on your neighbour?
Possible for winds to blow that herbicide to your neighbor?
There was a funny moment with one of Monsanto's lobbyists on french tv claiming you can drink round up being offered to do so and telling them he would not, so I guess YOU can drink it, but not that guy.
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
So, about a month ago, some jackass paid his filing fee and got an absolutely abominable ballot measure filed with the California AG...The Sodomite Suppression Act. It starts with:
a) The abominable crime against nature known as buggery, called also sodomy, is a monstrous evil that Almighty God, giver of freedom and liberty, commands us to suppress on pain of our utter destruction even as he overthrew Sodom and Gomorrha.
And goes downhill from there. The long and short of it is that said jackass doesn't just want to make homosexuality an executable offense, but also one that anyone can enforce if the state proves unwilling to. While the act it hopefully dead, now that it has reached the signature gathering stage, it has spawned a poetic response.
What makes this bad news gone right is the ballot measure filed in response. While the filer is aware that the law would be unconstitutional, she felt the need to make a point with her Intolerant Jackass Act, the meat of which is:
c) Any person, herein known as an "Intolerant Jackass," who brings forth a ballot measure that suggests the killing of gays and/or lesbians, whether this measure is called the Sodomite Suppression Act or is known by some other name, shall be required to attend sensitivity training for at least three (3) hours per month for twelve (12) consecutive months. In addition, the offender or "Intolerant Jackass" must donate $5000 to a pro-gay or pro-lesbian organization.
In other words, "Eat a dick, you fundie homophobe!"
Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion.
Eh didn't mosanto seed crops of competitors fields with their specific GMO brand crop and then sue those people for "stealing" them? They've done some bad shit.
IIRC the farmer in that case didn't buy the GMO (specifically the herbicide-resistant strain) seeds and his neighbors did. When it came time to end the harvest, the first farmer noticed that all but a few of his plants died to the herbicide (the ones near the fence), put two and two together, and started planting only the seeds from those plants. I believe this went on for about two years or so.
The neighbors, pissed, (the seed licenses cost $TEXAS) ratted him out and Monsanto came in and said "hey, you seem to be planting our plants, we'll call it even if you buy the license or stop planting that seed". Farmer refused and got sued.
But they really do charge a ton of money for those seed agreements, and they're partly responsible for the rise of herbicide resistant weeds in the First World.
So... pay Monsanto, or your neighbors poison your crops? At that point it's practically protection money. "That's some nice corn you have. Shame if something were to happen to it..."
I'm not sure if you're being intentionally obtuse. He specifically only replanted seeds from the plants he knew/heavily suspected were GM. He did this for a couple years, specifically to weed out any non GM plants in his harvest, so he could get the GM plants without paying for them in any way. When he was discovered, he was asked to pay/buy seeds like normal going forward, or stop doing it. He did neither.
The point is that this behavior isn't stealing. It's the entire history of agricultural cultivation. Of fucking course you replant the shit that works best.
It's not his fault. It's not even Monsanto's fault, really. It this stupid idea that you can own the genetic structure of a self replicating organism in the first place. And while I don't know if I'd say that's exactly evil, it can't find a single reason to think it's a good idea.
Yes, it really, really is. The digital equivalent would be if someone found a burned CD on the ground, proceeded to burn a ton of copies, sold them, and then claimed he had the right to sell them because the original was their property.
Um, I don't think there's a digital equivalent to stuff like pollination and such. Or if there is... that sure as hell ain't it.
How is it the farmer's fault that his crop on his property caught this strain, all without any action on his part? How would he even known they caught that strain in the first place?
I'm not even a farmer, and I think I can figure out one of the main tenants of replanting. If you have two plants, and one died while the other lived, you use the seeds from the one that lived to plant more. I can figure this out because it has another more popular name. Survival of the fittest.
Did you read the case you are parroting? He specifically sprayed his crops with roundup (which, at the time, had a 100% fatality rate on non Roundup resistant crops) after realizing some of his crops on the property border survived being sprayed by roundup. He knew he had Monsanto products because he saw some of his border crops survived Monsanto brand weedkiller, proceeded to spray the rest of his crops with Monsanto brand weedkiller, and took the Monsanto brand weedkiller resistant crops (which is a GMO made by Monsanto) and replanted them. And Monsanto literally sued him to simply stop planting those crops. They didn't even take money from him; they literally settled at "We know you intentionally killed all your crops that weren't resistant to our weedkiller, so you could identify and use our crops without a license. Stop doing that."
And yes, it is very similar to a simple concept: Copying files. I can easily copy everything about Office onto a thumbdrive and bring it around, but if I were to be discovered using Office-thumbdrives as the primary means of access at a business, Microsoft could and would sue me. Monsanto is doing the same thing here; they are specifically suing people who intentionally use their product without a license. They aren't even getting into the accidental cross-pollination issue, which is why suits against them have been thrown out, and they will specifically pay for damages and cleanup if you report your crop has some Monsanto crop in it. They're about as nice of an "evil corporation" as you can get while still attempting to actually sell their product.
Eh didn't mosanto seed crops of competitors fields with their specific GMO brand crop and then sue those people for "stealing" them? They've done some bad shit.
IIRC the farmer in that case didn't buy the GMO (specifically the herbicide-resistant strain) seeds and his neighbors did. When it came time to end the harvest, the first farmer noticed that all but a few of his plants died to the herbicide (the ones near the fence), put two and two together, and started planting only the seeds from those plants. I believe this went on for about two years or so.
The neighbors, pissed, (the seed licenses cost $TEXAS) ratted him out and Monsanto came in and said "hey, you seem to be planting our plants, we'll call it even if you buy the license or stop planting that seed". Farmer refused and got sued.
But they really do charge a ton of money for those seed agreements, and they're partly responsible for the rise of herbicide resistant weeds in the First World.
So... pay Monsanto, or your neighbors poison your crops? At that point it's practically protection money. "That's some nice corn you have. Shame if something were to happen to it..."
I'm not sure if you're being intentionally obtuse. He specifically only replanted seeds from the plants he knew/heavily suspected were GM. He did this for a couple years, specifically to weed out any non GM plants in his harvest, so he could get the GM plants without paying for them in any way. When he was discovered, he was asked to pay/buy seeds like normal going forward, or stop doing it. He did neither.
The point is that this behavior isn't stealing. It's the entire history of agricultural cultivation. Of fucking course you replant the shit that works best.
It's not his fault. It's not even Monsanto's fault, really. It this stupid idea that you can own the genetic structure of a self replicating organism in the first place. And while I don't know if I'd say that's exactly evil, it can't find a single reason to think it's a good idea.
If you can't license GMOs, people won't make them, which is bad for everybody in the end. There's no reason to do major industrial research if you are guaranteed to make no money on it. It is the same reason any other business innovation is protected by patent or copyright, and just because they can replicate doesn't mean the ideas are not deserving of protection. Do you believe that code can be patented? It's even more replicatable.
GMOs will still be made, they will instead be directed by charity / educational institutions instead of corporate profit driven institutions.
That's bull. Yes, they will be made. There will also be slower innovation with less advances. Corporations having the ability to patent their discoveries in order to make a profit isn't new, and it isn't inherently bad; it's part of what allows capitalism to work in an age dominated by technology rather than labor. Even then, there'd be no reason for educational institutions to mass produce or refine any of their GMOs for use in commercial agriculture, which would, again, mean that somebody has to foot the bill to get the ball rolling there.
There's lots of better arguments than "How could he have known????". I'm pretty sure he knew. It wouldn't take a lot of thinking to figure that one out.
Then the implication of that is that the herbicide has a 100% fatality rate on non-GMO crops, because that's the only conceivable reason some of his crops survived.
Which means holy fuck that really is a protection racket. "Buy our crops, or fuck your crops."
There are herbicides besides Roundup. The specific good about Roundup is that, if you buy a Monsanto seed license, you can be basically guaranteed to kill all competing crops that are not Monsanto brand, which gives you a much better yield (and to our knowledge, Roundup isn't especially bad for the environment). If you don't want to/can't afford roundup+GMOs, you take the risk of lower crop yields and more diseases, but Monsanto and other farmers are not intentionally spraying your field with roundup; that would be illegal and expensive for them. If they wanted to kill your crops illegally, they could just burn them, but why would they want to callously break the law just to fuck you over?
Eh didn't mosanto seed crops of competitors fields with their specific GMO brand crop and then sue those people for "stealing" them? They've done some bad shit.
IIRC the farmer in that case didn't buy the GMO (specifically the herbicide-resistant strain) seeds and his neighbors did. When it came time to end the harvest, the first farmer noticed that all but a few of his plants died to the herbicide (the ones near the fence), put two and two together, and started planting only the seeds from those plants. I believe this went on for about two years or so.
The neighbors, pissed, (the seed licenses cost $TEXAS) ratted him out and Monsanto came in and said "hey, you seem to be planting our plants, we'll call it even if you buy the license or stop planting that seed". Farmer refused and got sued.
But they really do charge a ton of money for those seed agreements, and they're partly responsible for the rise of herbicide resistant weeds in the First World.
So... pay Monsanto, or your neighbors poison your crops? At that point it's practically protection money. "That's some nice corn you have. Shame if something were to happen to it..."
I'm not sure if you're being intentionally obtuse. He specifically only replanted seeds from the plants he knew/heavily suspected were GM. He did this for a couple years, specifically to weed out any non GM plants in his harvest, so he could get the GM plants without paying for them in any way. When he was discovered, he was asked to pay/buy seeds like normal going forward, or stop doing it. He did neither.
The point is that this behavior isn't stealing. It's the entire history of agricultural cultivation. Of fucking course you replant the shit that works best.
It's not his fault. It's not even Monsanto's fault, really. It this stupid idea that you can own the genetic structure of a self replicating organism in the first place. And while I don't know if I'd say that's exactly evil, it can't find a single reason to think it's a good idea.
Yes, it really, really is. The digital equivalent would be if someone found a burned CD on the ground, proceeded to burn a ton of copies, sold them, and then claimed he had the right to sell them because the original was their property.
Um, I don't think there's a digital equivalent to stuff like pollination and such. Or if there is... that sure as hell ain't it.
How is it the farmer's fault that his crop on his property caught this strain, all without any action on his part? How would he even known they caught that strain in the first place?
I'm not even a farmer, and I think I can figure out one of the main tenants of replanting. If you have two plants, and one died while the other lived, you use the seeds from the one that lived to plant more. I can figure this out because it has another more popular name. Survival of the fittest.
Again, he didn't get in trouble for it spreading. He got in trouble for taking actions to isolate the GMO, reproduce only it, and then sell it. What part about that isn't clear?
By "isolate the GMO" you mean "took the seeds from the potatoes that didn't die and used them to plant more potatoes".
And again, how would he have even known for sure they lived specifically because of this GMO?
The way you word it, he used his chemistry set in the barn to extract and steal the GMO. Which as absurd as that is, were it even remotely how it happened, you might have a point. Or even if he took the low tech approach of jumping his neighbor's fence and stealing his crops directly. Instead he just replanted his own crops.
To repeat: He did, in fact, take the seeds of potatoes that didn't die and plant them. He just did so after spraying his entire crop with Roundup, the Monsanto Brand Weedkiller that Kills Everything Not Monsanto Brand. It isn't even like he took the "hardy" strain that survived his neighbor's accidental weedkiller and replanted it; he made sure he was only using stuff that survived Roundup by killing everything else.
roundup does have a 100% fatality rate on non-gmo crops (or it did, things are getting resistant), that lets farmers just spray whole fields quickly and only leave your crop alive.
But it's not like farmers are going around spraying others fields, that would be expensive and pointless, why would you waste herbicide on your neighbour?
Possible for winds to blow that herbicide to your neighbor?
There was a funny moment with one of Monsanto's lobbyists on french tv claiming you can drink round up being offered to do so and telling them he would not, so I guess YOU can drink it, but not that guy.
That is definitely a possibility, given it's what happened with the case being discussed, but that would likely be either a minor amount of land affected by the pesticide, or grounds for a lawsuit against the other farmer for negligence. It's not really an argument that Monsanto is a protection racket; with as much negative coverage they get over actions where they are unquestionably (by current law) in the right, if there was a serious issue with Roundup contamination it'd be everywhere.
I ate an engineer
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Just_Bri_ThanksSeething with ragefrom a handbasket.Registered User, ClubPAregular
So, about a month ago, some jackass paid his filing fee and got an absolutely abominable ballot measure filed with the California AG...The Sodomite Suppression Act. It starts with:
a) The abominable crime against nature known as buggery, called also sodomy, is a monstrous evil that Almighty God, giver of freedom and liberty, commands us to suppress on pain of our utter destruction even as he overthrew Sodom and Gomorrha.
And goes downhill from there. The long and short of it is that said jackass doesn't just want to make homosexuality an executable offense, but also one that anyone can enforce if the state proves unwilling to. While the act it hopefully dead, now that it has reached the signature gathering stage, it has spawned a poetic response.
What makes this bad news gone right is the ballot measure filed in response. While the filer is aware that the law would be unconstitutional, she felt the need to make a point with her Intolerant Jackass Act, the meat of which is:
c) Any person, herein known as an "Intolerant Jackass," who brings forth a ballot measure that suggests the killing of gays and/or lesbians, whether this measure is called the Sodomite Suppression Act or is known by some other name, shall be required to attend sensitivity training for at least three (3) hours per month for twelve (12) consecutive months. In addition, the offender or "Intolerant Jackass" must donate $5000 to a pro-gay or pro-lesbian organization.
In other words, "Eat a dick, you fundie homophobe!"
The state AG has since asked the courts for permission to kill it with fire.
...and when you are done with that; take a folding
chair to Creation and then suplex the Void.
Eh didn't mosanto seed crops of competitors fields with their specific GMO brand crop and then sue those people for "stealing" them? They've done some bad shit.
IIRC the farmer in that case didn't buy the GMO (specifically the herbicide-resistant strain) seeds and his neighbors did. When it came time to end the harvest, the first farmer noticed that all but a few of his plants died to the herbicide (the ones near the fence), put two and two together, and started planting only the seeds from those plants. I believe this went on for about two years or so.
The neighbors, pissed, (the seed licenses cost $TEXAS) ratted him out and Monsanto came in and said "hey, you seem to be planting our plants, we'll call it even if you buy the license or stop planting that seed". Farmer refused and got sued.
But they really do charge a ton of money for those seed agreements, and they're partly responsible for the rise of herbicide resistant weeds in the First World.
So... pay Monsanto, or your neighbors poison your crops? At that point it's practically protection money. "That's some nice corn you have. Shame if something were to happen to it..."
I'm not sure if you're being intentionally obtuse. He specifically only replanted seeds from the plants he knew/heavily suspected were GM. He did this for a couple years, specifically to weed out any non GM plants in his harvest, so he could get the GM plants without paying for them in any way. When he was discovered, he was asked to pay/buy seeds like normal going forward, or stop doing it. He did neither.
I misunderstood. I thought the herbicide that was killing his crops was drifting in from his neighbors' fields.
Eh didn't mosanto seed crops of competitors fields with their specific GMO brand crop and then sue those people for "stealing" them? They've done some bad shit.
IIRC the farmer in that case didn't buy the GMO (specifically the herbicide-resistant strain) seeds and his neighbors did. When it came time to end the harvest, the first farmer noticed that all but a few of his plants died to the herbicide (the ones near the fence), put two and two together, and started planting only the seeds from those plants. I believe this went on for about two years or so.
The neighbors, pissed, (the seed licenses cost $TEXAS) ratted him out and Monsanto came in and said "hey, you seem to be planting our plants, we'll call it even if you buy the license or stop planting that seed". Farmer refused and got sued.
But they really do charge a ton of money for those seed agreements, and they're partly responsible for the rise of herbicide resistant weeds in the First World.
So... pay Monsanto, or your neighbors poison your crops? At that point it's practically protection money. "That's some nice corn you have. Shame if something were to happen to it..."
I'm not sure if you're being intentionally obtuse. He specifically only replanted seeds from the plants he knew/heavily suspected were GM. He did this for a couple years, specifically to weed out any non GM plants in his harvest, so he could get the GM plants without paying for them in any way. When he was discovered, he was asked to pay/buy seeds like normal going forward, or stop doing it. He did neither.
I misunderstood. I thought the herbicide that was killing his crops was drifting in from his neighbors' fields.
It's all good. It's such a rough topic that it's hard to get people to read and listen to what actually happens sometimes. It really annoys me that Monsanto is held up as the worst of the worst, when they are for all intents and purposes, fairly fucking benign for a world spanning megacorp.
Eh didn't mosanto seed crops of competitors fields with their specific GMO brand crop and then sue those people for "stealing" them? They've done some bad shit.
IIRC the farmer in that case didn't buy the GMO (specifically the herbicide-resistant strain) seeds and his neighbors did. When it came time to end the harvest, the first farmer noticed that all but a few of his plants died to the herbicide (the ones near the fence), put two and two together, and started planting only the seeds from those plants. I believe this went on for about two years or so.
The neighbors, pissed, (the seed licenses cost $TEXAS) ratted him out and Monsanto came in and said "hey, you seem to be planting our plants, we'll call it even if you buy the license or stop planting that seed". Farmer refused and got sued.
But they really do charge a ton of money for those seed agreements, and they're partly responsible for the rise of herbicide resistant weeds in the First World.
So... pay Monsanto, or your neighbors poison your crops? At that point it's practically protection money. "That's some nice corn you have. Shame if something were to happen to it..."
I'm not sure if you're being intentionally obtuse. He specifically only replanted seeds from the plants he knew/heavily suspected were GM. He did this for a couple years, specifically to weed out any non GM plants in his harvest, so he could get the GM plants without paying for them in any way. When he was discovered, he was asked to pay/buy seeds like normal going forward, or stop doing it. He did neither.
The point is that this behavior isn't stealing. It's the entire history of agricultural cultivation. Of fucking course you replant the shit that works best.
It's not his fault. It's not even Monsanto's fault, really. It this stupid idea that you can own the genetic structure of a self replicating organism in the first place. And while I don't know if I'd say that's exactly evil, it can't find a single reason to think it's a good idea.
Yes, it really, really is. The digital equivalent would be if someone found a burned CD on the ground, proceeded to burn a ton of copies, sold them, and then claimed he had the right to sell them because the original was their property.
Um, I don't think there's a digital equivalent to stuff like pollination and such. Or if there is... that sure as hell ain't it.
How is it the farmer's fault that his crop on his property caught this strain, all without any action on his part? How would he even known they caught that strain in the first place?
I'm not even a farmer, and I think I can figure out one of the main tenants of replanting. If you have two plants, and one died while the other lived, you use the seeds from the one that lived to plant more. I can figure this out because it has another more popular name. Survival of the fittest.
Did you read the case you are parroting? He specifically sprayed his crops with roundup (which, at the time, had a 100% fatality rate on non Roundup resistant crops) after realizing some of his crops on the property border survived being sprayed by roundup. He knew he had Monsanto products because he saw some of his border crops survived Monsanto brand weedkiller, proceeded to spray the rest of his crops with Monsanto brand weedkiller, and took the Monsanto brand weedkiller resistant crops (which is a GMO made by Monsanto) and replanted them. And Monsanto literally sued him to simply stop planting those crops. They didn't even take money from him; they literally settled at "We know you intentionally killed all your crops that weren't resistant to our weedkiller, so you could identify and use our crops without a license. Stop doing that."
And he should be in the right to do so. If Monsanto's crops didn't exist, and he was attempting to breed a roundup resistant plant, he would have done the same thing. Which means that a ruling in Monsanto's favor, basically makes breeding for favorable traits illegal if a crop which has been patented does something similar. Breeding for favorable traits has massively improved agriculture across human history, GMO should work with that, not prevent it. Any ruling that doesn't allow for both is a bad one. (And nothing has a 100% fatality rate at every dose, there will always be some level of roundup that you can use, that will result in some plants dying, and others, not.)
Eh didn't mosanto seed crops of competitors fields with their specific GMO brand crop and then sue those people for "stealing" them? They've done some bad shit.
IIRC the farmer in that case didn't buy the GMO (specifically the herbicide-resistant strain) seeds and his neighbors did. When it came time to end the harvest, the first farmer noticed that all but a few of his plants died to the herbicide (the ones near the fence), put two and two together, and started planting only the seeds from those plants. I believe this went on for about two years or so.
The neighbors, pissed, (the seed licenses cost $TEXAS) ratted him out and Monsanto came in and said "hey, you seem to be planting our plants, we'll call it even if you buy the license or stop planting that seed". Farmer refused and got sued.
But they really do charge a ton of money for those seed agreements, and they're partly responsible for the rise of herbicide resistant weeds in the First World.
So... pay Monsanto, or your neighbors poison your crops? At that point it's practically protection money. "That's some nice corn you have. Shame if something were to happen to it..."
I'm not sure if you're being intentionally obtuse. He specifically only replanted seeds from the plants he knew/heavily suspected were GM. He did this for a couple years, specifically to weed out any non GM plants in his harvest, so he could get the GM plants without paying for them in any way. When he was discovered, he was asked to pay/buy seeds like normal going forward, or stop doing it. He did neither.
The point is that this behavior isn't stealing. It's the entire history of agricultural cultivation. Of fucking course you replant the shit that works best.
It's not his fault. It's not even Monsanto's fault, really. It this stupid idea that you can own the genetic structure of a self replicating organism in the first place. And while I don't know if I'd say that's exactly evil, it can't find a single reason to think it's a good idea.
If you can't license GMOs, people won't make them, which is bad for everybody in the end. There's no reason to do major industrial research if you are guaranteed to make no money on it. It is the same reason any other business innovation is protected by patent or copyright, and just because they can replicate doesn't mean the ideas are not deserving of protection. Do you believe that code can be patented? It's even more replicatable.
GMOs will still be made, they will instead be directed by charity / educational institutions instead of corporate profit driven institutions.
That's bull. Yes, they will be made. There will also be slower innovation with less advances. Corporations having the ability to patent their discoveries in order to make a profit isn't new, and it isn't inherently bad; it's part of what allows capitalism to work in an age dominated by technology rather than labor. Even then, there'd be no reason for educational institutions to mass produce or refine any of their GMOs for use in commercial agriculture, which would, again, mean that somebody has to foot the bill to get the ball rolling there.
There would still be a place for commercial agriculture there, to fill that last step, to mass produce and refine. It would be a bit more difficult without patents, but you can still make use of trade secrets, and stay ahead by simply being a generation ahead of your competitors, and being efficient and convenient in mass production.
And there's also the argument that many patents may have a net negative effect on innovation and advances. Yes, it encourages investment and money, but it also drastically increases the barriers to entry for people who would contribute further innovations, who have to re-invent the wheel, reproduce everything from scratch, or work off of decades old designs, rather than making modifications to more recent strains. And, because of this ruling, even actively weed every plant that anyone has made any modifications to, or face legal troubles.
If company A makes a modification to a plant, and company B makes a different modification to that plant, and both are great, and it would be great if you could put them both together in the same plant, or breed the two plants together, well, then, you're legally screwed, because it's not going to happen. That's certainly not encouraging innovation and advances. Even if it balances out that patents are a net benefit in this situation, it's obviously not the case that patents are strictly beneficial for innovation and advancement, or even net beneficial in all instances.
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Nova_CI have the needThe need for speedRegistered Userregular
Eh didn't mosanto seed crops of competitors fields with their specific GMO brand crop and then sue those people for "stealing" them? They've done some bad shit.
IIRC the farmer in that case didn't buy the GMO (specifically the herbicide-resistant strain) seeds and his neighbors did. When it came time to end the harvest, the first farmer noticed that all but a few of his plants died to the herbicide (the ones near the fence), put two and two together, and started planting only the seeds from those plants. I believe this went on for about two years or so.
The neighbors, pissed, (the seed licenses cost $TEXAS) ratted him out and Monsanto came in and said "hey, you seem to be planting our plants, we'll call it even if you buy the license or stop planting that seed". Farmer refused and got sued.
But they really do charge a ton of money for those seed agreements, and they're partly responsible for the rise of herbicide resistant weeds in the First World.
So... pay Monsanto, or your neighbors poison your crops? At that point it's practically protection money. "That's some nice corn you have. Shame if something were to happen to it..."
I'm not sure if you're being intentionally obtuse. He specifically only replanted seeds from the plants he knew/heavily suspected were GM. He did this for a couple years, specifically to weed out any non GM plants in his harvest, so he could get the GM plants without paying for them in any way. When he was discovered, he was asked to pay/buy seeds like normal going forward, or stop doing it. He did neither.
The point is that this behavior isn't stealing. It's the entire history of agricultural cultivation. Of fucking course you replant the shit that works best.
It's not his fault. It's not even Monsanto's fault, really. It this stupid idea that you can own the genetic structure of a self replicating organism in the first place. And while I don't know if I'd say that's exactly evil, it can't find a single reason to think it's a good idea.
Yes, it really, really is. The digital equivalent would be if someone found a burned CD on the ground, proceeded to burn a ton of copies, sold them, and then claimed he had the right to sell them because the original was their property.
Um, I don't think there's a digital equivalent to stuff like pollination and such. Or if there is... that sure as hell ain't it.
How is it the farmer's fault that his crop on his property caught this strain, all without any action on his part? How would he even known they caught that strain in the first place?
I'm not even a farmer, and I think I can figure out one of the main tenants of replanting. If you have two plants, and one died while the other lived, you use the seeds from the one that lived to plant more. I can figure this out because it has another more popular name. Survival of the fittest.
Did you read the case you are parroting? He specifically sprayed his crops with roundup (which, at the time, had a 100% fatality rate on non Roundup resistant crops) after realizing some of his crops on the property border survived being sprayed by roundup. He knew he had Monsanto products because he saw some of his border crops survived Monsanto brand weedkiller, proceeded to spray the rest of his crops with Monsanto brand weedkiller, and took the Monsanto brand weedkiller resistant crops (which is a GMO made by Monsanto) and replanted them. And Monsanto literally sued him to simply stop planting those crops. They didn't even take money from him; they literally settled at "We know you intentionally killed all your crops that weren't resistant to our weedkiller, so you could identify and use our crops without a license. Stop doing that."
And he should be in the right to do so. If Monsanto's crops didn't exist, and he was attempting to breed a roundup resistant plant, he would have done the same thing. Which means that a ruling in Monsanto's favor, basically makes breeding for favorable traits illegal if a crop which has been patented does something similar. Breeding for favorable traits has massively improved agriculture across human history, GMO should work with that, not prevent it. Any ruling that doesn't allow for both is a bad one. (And nothing has a 100% fatality rate at every dose, there will always be some level of roundup that you can use, that will result in some plants dying, and others, not.)
Eh didn't mosanto seed crops of competitors fields with their specific GMO brand crop and then sue those people for "stealing" them? They've done some bad shit.
IIRC the farmer in that case didn't buy the GMO (specifically the herbicide-resistant strain) seeds and his neighbors did. When it came time to end the harvest, the first farmer noticed that all but a few of his plants died to the herbicide (the ones near the fence), put two and two together, and started planting only the seeds from those plants. I believe this went on for about two years or so.
The neighbors, pissed, (the seed licenses cost $TEXAS) ratted him out and Monsanto came in and said "hey, you seem to be planting our plants, we'll call it even if you buy the license or stop planting that seed". Farmer refused and got sued.
But they really do charge a ton of money for those seed agreements, and they're partly responsible for the rise of herbicide resistant weeds in the First World.
So... pay Monsanto, or your neighbors poison your crops? At that point it's practically protection money. "That's some nice corn you have. Shame if something were to happen to it..."
I'm not sure if you're being intentionally obtuse. He specifically only replanted seeds from the plants he knew/heavily suspected were GM. He did this for a couple years, specifically to weed out any non GM plants in his harvest, so he could get the GM plants without paying for them in any way. When he was discovered, he was asked to pay/buy seeds like normal going forward, or stop doing it. He did neither.
The point is that this behavior isn't stealing. It's the entire history of agricultural cultivation. Of fucking course you replant the shit that works best.
It's not his fault. It's not even Monsanto's fault, really. It this stupid idea that you can own the genetic structure of a self replicating organism in the first place. And while I don't know if I'd say that's exactly evil, it can't find a single reason to think it's a good idea.
If you can't license GMOs, people won't make them, which is bad for everybody in the end. There's no reason to do major industrial research if you are guaranteed to make no money on it. It is the same reason any other business innovation is protected by patent or copyright, and just because they can replicate doesn't mean the ideas are not deserving of protection. Do you believe that code can be patented? It's even more replicatable.
GMOs will still be made, they will instead be directed by charity / educational institutions instead of corporate profit driven institutions.
That's bull. Yes, they will be made. There will also be slower innovation with less advances. Corporations having the ability to patent their discoveries in order to make a profit isn't new, and it isn't inherently bad; it's part of what allows capitalism to work in an age dominated by technology rather than labor. Even then, there'd be no reason for educational institutions to mass produce or refine any of their GMOs for use in commercial agriculture, which would, again, mean that somebody has to foot the bill to get the ball rolling there.
There would still be a place for commercial agriculture there, to fill that last step, to mass produce and refine. It would be a bit more difficult without patents, but you can still make use of trade secrets, and stay ahead by simply being a generation ahead of your competitors, and being efficient and convenient in mass production.
And there's also the argument that many patents may have a net negative effect on innovation and advances. Yes, it encourages investment and money, but it also drastically increases the barriers to entry for people who would contribute further innovations, who have to re-invent the wheel, reproduce everything from scratch, or work off of decades old designs, rather than making modifications to more recent strains. And, because of this ruling, even actively weed every plant that anyone has made any modifications to, or face legal troubles.
If company A makes a modification to a plant, and company B makes a different modification to that plant, and both are great, and it would be great if you could put them both together in the same plant, or breed the two plants together, well, then, you're legally screwed, because it's not going to happen. That's certainly not encouraging innovation and advances. Even if it balances out that patents are a net benefit in this situation, it's obviously not the case that patents are strictly beneficial for innovation and advancement, or even net beneficial in all instances.
Within one season his crop was 95-98% identifiable as containing Monsanto's patented gene. One season.
This is actually like the example given of using Microsoft Office or Adobe Photoshop without a license and selling the product you make with them. Quite exactly like that example, now that I think of it. That's a perfect analogue.
Monsanto was in their right to sue. The only outcome of the trial was the farmer was told to stop using canola descended from Monsanto's genetically modified crop, or pay for the license. This is much, much, much more reasonable than the thousands of lawsuits brought by RIAA and MPAA and various software companies. RIAA demanded thousands of dollars from kids downloading songs. This farmer was profiting directly from using Monsanto's technology without their permission and was simply told to stop.
At this point, and in this case, sticking to your guns about this being a terrible thing makes you look like a fanatic.
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Nova_CI have the needThe need for speedRegistered Userregular
I mean, given your objection based on the farmer creating his own Roundup resistant strain, let me ask you a question:
When a screenwriter or novelist writes something that is extraordinarily close to an existing product, even if they came by it honestly, are they able to sell it and profit from it?
And he should be in the right to do so. If Monsanto's crops didn't exist, and he was attempting to breed a roundup resistant plant, he would have done the same thing. Which means that a ruling in Monsanto's favor, basically makes breeding for favorable traits illegal if a crop which has been patented does something similar. Breeding for favorable traits has massively improved agriculture across human history, GMO should work with that, not prevent it. Any ruling that doesn't allow for both is a bad one. (And nothing has a 100% fatality rate at every dose, there will always be some level of roundup that you can use, that will result in some plants dying, and others, not.)
He could certainly breed a roundup resistant plant if he wished to. Again, going back to the technology issue: OpenOffice is completely legal. Copying Office's code and selling it as OpenOffice would not be. He did not attempt, in any meaningful fashion, to create his own roundup resistant plant; he simply used Monsanto's plant without permission.
There is nothing illegal about breeding for favorable crops even with GMO patents, and from what I recall the actually scary potential abuses, such as the human gene patenting of the mid 2000s, was ruled unconstutitional by a 9-0 vote. The only thing that is illegal is, to keep beating a dead horse, "ripping the source code" by simply planting seeds you do not have a license for, or (I suppose) attempting to create "derivative works" by taking roundup resistant crops you don't have a license for and breeding them to significantly differ.
Yes, roundup isn't 100% effective in all cases, but Glyphosate resistant plants are incredibly uncommon (aside from Monsanto products) and it is very efficient at killing regular plants. In even a reasonable dose, such as the one that killed the farmer's crops on the border, it would be obvious that the crops that survived are incredibly likely to be Roundup resistant (and thus Monsanto products). The fact the farmer sprayed the rest of his land with Roundup furthered the case that he intentionally acted such that he would be using Monsanto seeds; this is not a case where there's a 30% chance the plants that survived were simply lucky.
There would still be a place for commercial agriculture there, to fill that last step, to mass produce and refine. It would be a bit more difficult without patents, but you can still make use of trade secrets, and stay ahead by simply being a generation ahead of your competitors, and being efficient and convenient in mass production.
And there's also the argument that many patents may have a net negative effect on innovation and advances. Yes, it encourages investment and money, but it also drastically increases the barriers to entry for people who would contribute further innovations, who have to re-invent the wheel, reproduce everything from scratch, or work off of decades old designs, rather than making modifications to more recent strains. And, because of this ruling, even actively weed every plant that anyone has made any modifications to, or face legal troubles.
If company A makes a modification to a plant, and company B makes a different modification to that plant, and both are great, and it would be great if you could put them both together in the same plant, or breed the two plants together, well, then, you're legally screwed, because it's not going to happen. That's certainly not encouraging innovation and advances. Even if it balances out that patents are a net benefit in this situation, it's obviously not the case that patents are strictly beneficial for innovation and advancement, or even net beneficial in all instances.
A bit more difficult is a massive understatement. Monsanto is bigger (in terms of revenue) than the five largest charities in the world combined, and your suggestion is basically that charities and university research could sub-in for that? Just in terms of scale of research, Monsanto (and other seed companies) are so large that it would be incredibly difficult to replicate that by, essentially, sinking money in with no return on investment. And "trade secrets" might be useful for herbicide sales, but would be absolutely worthless for seed sales; it doesn't matter if other companies don't know how you modified your plants or what the modifications were, if it replicates itself they can still use it. For instance, if you could "grow" WD-40, I guarantee it would be patented today rather than simply a trade secret; they'd take their 20 years of sales rather than instantly allow competitors to sell their exact product.
Yes, it limits innovation to some extent, but that's because it allows innovation to be worth something. There would be no point for a major corporation to invest in building the wheel if they had no guarantee they could sell any products without competitors (or their market) getting it for free. Yes, it does mean that Monsanto has several advanced plant strains that other people can't pick at for twenty years. While that may be worse than the ideal of the entire agriculture industry working together to research plants and grow more food for society, it's far better than the practical result: Everybody could work together with less money and less expertise than Monsanto has, and we'd still be behind in terms of product.
For Company A and Company B mixing their plants: They do! Monsanto licenses the absolute shit out of their plants to other seed companies. The difference is that, once again, the billions of dollars Monsanto can make by providing mass quantities of easy to grow and more efficient crops allows them (and their competitors) to spend a lot more money, hire a lot more people, and cultivate a lot more plants than could be done by university or charity research. Yes, it is not "ideal" because if you removed the attempts to make profit but kept the same amount of money "in the game," then there could be a lot more innovation, but the only reason the money is in the game to begin with is because there is profit to be made.
EDIT: There is one way that GMOs could keep ahead of the game even without patents: Terminator seeds. These are GMO plants that specifically produce sterile or incredibly inferior offspring, requiring farmer's to (essentially) suffer from an even harsher kind of licensing than current GMO patents force by buying seeds every year. And big, evil Monsanto specifically pledged to never sell such seeds! While it may be a political move, it's likely that the current patent system encourages Monsanto and other commercial giants to produce farmer-friendly plants in order to turn a profit in the long term and to keep R&D simpler; the only way commercial entities could stay in the game without patent protection is to "trade secret" new crops of Terminator seeds every year, which would fuck the farmers over even more, but would likely be the only way to keep spending billions on R&D.
Eh didn't mosanto seed crops of competitors fields with their specific GMO brand crop and then sue those people for "stealing" them? They've done some bad shit.
IIRC the farmer in that case didn't buy the GMO (specifically the herbicide-resistant strain) seeds and his neighbors did. When it came time to end the harvest, the first farmer noticed that all but a few of his plants died to the herbicide (the ones near the fence), put two and two together, and started planting only the seeds from those plants. I believe this went on for about two years or so.
The neighbors, pissed, (the seed licenses cost $TEXAS) ratted him out and Monsanto came in and said "hey, you seem to be planting our plants, we'll call it even if you buy the license or stop planting that seed". Farmer refused and got sued.
But they really do charge a ton of money for those seed agreements, and they're partly responsible for the rise of herbicide resistant weeds in the First World.
So... pay Monsanto, or your neighbors poison your crops? At that point it's practically protection money. "That's some nice corn you have. Shame if something were to happen to it..."
I'm not sure if you're being intentionally obtuse. He specifically only replanted seeds from the plants he knew/heavily suspected were GM. He did this for a couple years, specifically to weed out any non GM plants in his harvest, so he could get the GM plants without paying for them in any way. When he was discovered, he was asked to pay/buy seeds like normal going forward, or stop doing it. He did neither.
The point is that this behavior isn't stealing. It's the entire history of agricultural cultivation. Of fucking course you replant the shit that works best.
It's not his fault. It's not even Monsanto's fault, really. It this stupid idea that you can own the genetic structure of a self replicating organism in the first place. And while I don't know if I'd say that's exactly evil, it can't find a single reason to think it's a good idea.
Yes, it really, really is. The digital equivalent would be if someone found a burned CD on the ground, proceeded to burn a ton of copies, sold them, and then claimed he had the right to sell them because the original was their property.
Um, I don't think there's a digital equivalent to stuff like pollination and such. Or if there is... that sure as hell ain't it.
How is it the farmer's fault that his crop on his property caught this strain, all without any action on his part? How would he even known they caught that strain in the first place?
I'm not even a farmer, and I think I can figure out one of the main tenants of replanting. If you have two plants, and one died while the other lived, you use the seeds from the one that lived to plant more. I can figure this out because it has another more popular name. Survival of the fittest.
Did you read the case you are parroting? He specifically sprayed his crops with roundup (which, at the time, had a 100% fatality rate on non Roundup resistant crops) after realizing some of his crops on the property border survived being sprayed by roundup. He knew he had Monsanto products because he saw some of his border crops survived Monsanto brand weedkiller, proceeded to spray the rest of his crops with Monsanto brand weedkiller, and took the Monsanto brand weedkiller resistant crops (which is a GMO made by Monsanto) and replanted them. And Monsanto literally sued him to simply stop planting those crops. They didn't even take money from him; they literally settled at "We know you intentionally killed all your crops that weren't resistant to our weedkiller, so you could identify and use our crops without a license. Stop doing that."
And he should be in the right to do so. If Monsanto's crops didn't exist, and he was attempting to breed a roundup resistant plant, he would have done the same thing. Which means that a ruling in Monsanto's favor, basically makes breeding for favorable traits illegal if a crop which has been patented does something similar. Breeding for favorable traits has massively improved agriculture across human history, GMO should work with that, not prevent it. Any ruling that doesn't allow for both is a bad one. (And nothing has a 100% fatality rate at every dose, there will always be some level of roundup that you can use, that will result in some plants dying, and others, not.)
Eh didn't mosanto seed crops of competitors fields with their specific GMO brand crop and then sue those people for "stealing" them? They've done some bad shit.
IIRC the farmer in that case didn't buy the GMO (specifically the herbicide-resistant strain) seeds and his neighbors did. When it came time to end the harvest, the first farmer noticed that all but a few of his plants died to the herbicide (the ones near the fence), put two and two together, and started planting only the seeds from those plants. I believe this went on for about two years or so.
The neighbors, pissed, (the seed licenses cost $TEXAS) ratted him out and Monsanto came in and said "hey, you seem to be planting our plants, we'll call it even if you buy the license or stop planting that seed". Farmer refused and got sued.
But they really do charge a ton of money for those seed agreements, and they're partly responsible for the rise of herbicide resistant weeds in the First World.
So... pay Monsanto, or your neighbors poison your crops? At that point it's practically protection money. "That's some nice corn you have. Shame if something were to happen to it..."
I'm not sure if you're being intentionally obtuse. He specifically only replanted seeds from the plants he knew/heavily suspected were GM. He did this for a couple years, specifically to weed out any non GM plants in his harvest, so he could get the GM plants without paying for them in any way. When he was discovered, he was asked to pay/buy seeds like normal going forward, or stop doing it. He did neither.
The point is that this behavior isn't stealing. It's the entire history of agricultural cultivation. Of fucking course you replant the shit that works best.
It's not his fault. It's not even Monsanto's fault, really. It this stupid idea that you can own the genetic structure of a self replicating organism in the first place. And while I don't know if I'd say that's exactly evil, it can't find a single reason to think it's a good idea.
If you can't license GMOs, people won't make them, which is bad for everybody in the end. There's no reason to do major industrial research if you are guaranteed to make no money on it. It is the same reason any other business innovation is protected by patent or copyright, and just because they can replicate doesn't mean the ideas are not deserving of protection. Do you believe that code can be patented? It's even more replicatable.
GMOs will still be made, they will instead be directed by charity / educational institutions instead of corporate profit driven institutions.
That's bull. Yes, they will be made. There will also be slower innovation with less advances. Corporations having the ability to patent their discoveries in order to make a profit isn't new, and it isn't inherently bad; it's part of what allows capitalism to work in an age dominated by technology rather than labor. Even then, there'd be no reason for educational institutions to mass produce or refine any of their GMOs for use in commercial agriculture, which would, again, mean that somebody has to foot the bill to get the ball rolling there.
There would still be a place for commercial agriculture there, to fill that last step, to mass produce and refine. It would be a bit more difficult without patents, but you can still make use of trade secrets, and stay ahead by simply being a generation ahead of your competitors, and being efficient and convenient in mass production.
And there's also the argument that many patents may have a net negative effect on innovation and advances. Yes, it encourages investment and money, but it also drastically increases the barriers to entry for people who would contribute further innovations, who have to re-invent the wheel, reproduce everything from scratch, or work off of decades old designs, rather than making modifications to more recent strains. And, because of this ruling, even actively weed every plant that anyone has made any modifications to, or face legal troubles.
If company A makes a modification to a plant, and company B makes a different modification to that plant, and both are great, and it would be great if you could put them both together in the same plant, or breed the two plants together, well, then, you're legally screwed, because it's not going to happen. That's certainly not encouraging innovation and advances. Even if it balances out that patents are a net benefit in this situation, it's obviously not the case that patents are strictly beneficial for innovation and advancement, or even net beneficial in all instances.
Within one season his crop was 95-98% identifiable as containing Monsanto's patented gene. One season.
Yes? And? That's basically what you would expect to happen. If you spread something on your crops that kills most of them, and then use the seed from the survivors, then 100% of the next generation will be the descendants of those survivors. Given that roundup was used, and Monsanto's modification conferred roundup resistance, which is uncommon elsewhere, that seems to be a likely result.
This is actually like the example given of using Microsoft Office or Adobe Photoshop without a license and selling the product you make with them. Quite exactly like that example, now that I think of it. That's a perfect analogue.
It would be a good analogue if Office or Photoshop were things that got attached to previously open source programs, with Microsoft or Adobe then claiming ownership of the whole thing and preventing people from using standard procedure to develop the code further.
Monsanto has a patent on their specific seeds. They do not have a patent on Roundup (glyphosate) resistant crops in general, just their specific seeds, which are engineered and optimized for yield, Roundup resistance, and the area they are selling (to various degrees).
They are not saying that farmers can no longer grow their own glyphosate resistant crops. They are not saying that other companies cannot produce glyphosate resistant crops. The only thing they are saying is that, as their patent has been legally granted, intentionally growing and selling their plants without a license is against the law, and at that point they don't even sue for damages, they just force the farmer to stop. They are acting completely reasonably, and no matter how much you insist that they prevent any selective breeding program that could compete with them, you will still be incorrect.
As for your "and?" The point is that, despite the media perception about the event, the farmer intentionally cultivated and sold Monsanto plants without a license. Regardless of what your stance is on intellectual property, that is still a clear violation of it, and pretending you can't understand how people would see Monsanto's side is silly. You can disagree with something and understand it.
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I think any company that patents a genetic code is pretty evil.
Especially since I'm pretty sure Monsanto could feed the majority of the world if they wished too.
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Just_Bri_ThanksSeething with ragefrom a handbasket.Registered User, ClubPAregular
They almost certainly could not feed the world. They couldn't even afford the infrastructure to feed the majority of the world population that currently suffers from hunger (including those who have no availability of a balanced and healthy diet, but enough food to live); Monsanto's operating budget is around $15 billion, and even the most conservative estimates to feed the hungry in the world would be $30+ billion per year. Feeding the hungry is beyond the budget of any agricultural company. As an aside, in theory a government could pony up that kind of money relatively easily, but the problem there (and for Monsanto) would be trying to use that money to set up infrastructure in a large number of countries that don't have it without being seen as imperialistic (at best) on the world stage.
Even so, Monsanto has increased the world carrying capacity for food by a large amount and made money while doing so. Again, I believe that in an ideal world, they could manage to get as much funding and R&D done to produce such mass quantities of food without the need to be driven by profit, but I seriously doubt they would be able to do so. Likewise, I do not believe that Monsanto simply giving away their product as-is and losing all their R&D funding would produce more food, long term, than having them continue to make a profit and reinvest it in more GMOs. I can't exactly call Monsanto "good," but I don't see any reason to call them evil; every indication is that they're as benign as you could be for a massive corporation, given their lawsuits stop at "don't steal our stuff" rather than punitive damages, they license their product extensively and allow stack-rights (so you can crossbreed Monsanto products with other products and sell it, if you can afford the R&D), and they don't fuck over the farmers with Terminator seeds even though it would likely be very profitable in the short term.
EDIT: Also, when I say infrastructure, I would mean the supply chains, farmland, water supplies, and production facilities (e.g. fertilizer plants, storage silos) that any country suffering from hunger would need to sustain themselves. A large majority of that isn't in Monsanto's wheelhouse, so even if you feel that they're evil for not giving up all their money in order to solve world hunger, they'd be less evil than e.g. Facebook (who has a similar zero level of experience in setting up the infrastructure of impoverished nations, but has a lot more money with which to do so).
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They almost certainly could not feed the world. They couldn't even afford the infrastructure to feed the majority of the world population that currently suffers from hunger (including those who have no availability of a balanced and healthy diet, but enough food to live); Monsanto's operating budget is around $15 billion, and even the most conservative estimates to feed the hungry in the world would be $30+ billion per year. Feeding the hungry is beyond the budget of any agricultural company. As an aside, in theory a government could pony up that kind of money relatively easily, but the problem there (and for Monsanto) would be trying to use that money to set up infrastructure in a large number of countries that don't have it without being seen as imperialistic (at best) on the world stage.
Even so, Monsanto has increased the world carrying capacity for food by a large amount and made money while doing so. Again, I believe that in an ideal world, they could manage to get as much funding and R&D done to produce such mass quantities of food without the need to be driven by profit, but I seriously doubt they would be able to do so. Likewise, I do not believe that Monsanto simply giving away their product as-is and losing all their R&D funding would produce more food, long term, than having them continue to make a profit and reinvest it in more GMOs. I can't exactly call Monsanto "good," but I don't see any reason to call them evil; every indication is that they're as benign as you could be for a massive corporation, given their lawsuits stop at "don't steal our stuff" rather than punitive damages, they license their product extensively and allow stack-rights (so you can crossbreed Monsanto products with other products and sell it, if you can afford the R&D), and they don't fuck over the farmers with Terminator seeds even though it would likely be very profitable in the short term.
EDIT: Also, when I say infrastructure, I would mean the supply chains, farmland, water supplies, and production facilities (e.g. fertilizer plants, storage silos) that any country suffering from hunger would need to sustain themselves. A large majority of that isn't in Monsanto's wheelhouse, so even if you feel that they're evil for not giving up all their money in order to solve world hunger, they'd be less evil than e.g. Facebook (who has a similar zero level of experience in setting up the infrastructure of impoverished nations, but has a lot more money with which to do so).
Yes but creating hardy easily grown strains of foods seems to be something that's on their playing card. If they put their research department on the task we'd probably have ten different strains of drought resistant grains and vegetables helping to feed the world. Instead they seem more interested in patent trolling food.
Patent trolling does not have anything in common with Monsanto's practices. Do you actually intend to have a good faith discussion here?
I'm sorry, copyright trolling.
If that farmer didn't use Roundup to killed his non-GMO wheat and instead let nature take its course (the more hardy, energy efficient, quicker growing plant -always- wins; aka the Monsanto GMO wheat in this case) and fill his field over time, Monsanto would have still sued him.
We could always talk about how Monsanto is driving farmers in India to suicide because of the particular strain of GMO cotton they're selling over there. For ridiculous prices. And which seems rather prone to dying off.
No, they have patents, not copyrights. It just isn't patent trolling.
I would also read your wiki article before throwing out an example from the controversy section. Every source but the Indian government absolved Monsanto of blame, and the government was even blamed by its own sub organizations for setting up a poor system for farmers.
Finally, no, if he had not intentionally sprayed his canola (not wheat) it would not have taken over, and Monsanto has no history of suing when farmers do not intentionally cultivate their crop.
I would suggest reading further into the issues rather than assuming Monsanto must be evil because GMOs/patents/press.
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No, they have patents, not copyrights. It just isn't patent trolling.
I would also read your wiki article before throwing out an example from the controversy section. Every source but the Indian government absolved Monsanto of blame, and the government was even blamed by its own sub organizations for setting up a poor system for farmers.
Finally, no, if he had not intentionally sprayed his canola (not wheat) it would not have taken over, and Monsanto has no history of suing when farmers do not intentionally cultivate their crop.
I would suggest reading further into the issues rather than assuming Monsanto must be evil because GMOs/patents/press.
You mean The IFPRI, funded in part by CGIAR? Which counts Monsanto as a research partner and probably a funding partner although good luck finding the actual donations given by private companies.
because that's like the only organization saying that the bt cotton being twice as expensive and prone to crop failures isn't driving people who make their livelihood from growing cotton to commit suicide
No, they have patents, not copyrights. It just isn't patent trolling.
I would also read your wiki article before throwing out an example from the controversy section. Every source but the Indian government absolved Monsanto of blame, and the government was even blamed by its own sub organizations for setting up a poor system for farmers.
Finally, no, if he had not intentionally sprayed his canola (not wheat) it would not have taken over, and Monsanto has no history of suing when farmers do not intentionally cultivate their crop.
I would suggest reading further into the issues rather than assuming Monsanto must be evil because GMOs/patents/press.
You mean The IFPRI, funded in part by CGIAR? Which counts Monsanto as a research partner and probably a funding partner although good luck finding the actual donations given by private companies.
because that's like the only organization saying that the bt cotton being twice as expensive and prone to crop failures isn't driving people who make their livelihood from growing cotton to commit suicide
it's also based in Washington D.C.
Well, from the piece you posted, when the government had a major university study the matter, they determined that the actual problems were more strutural:
In 2004, in response to a request from the All India Biodynamic and Organic Farming Association, the Mumbai High Court required the Tata Institute to produce a report on farmer suicides in Maharashtra, and the institute submitted its report in March 2005. The survey cited "government apathy, the absence of a safety net for farmers, and lack of access to information related to agriculture as the chief causes for the desperate condition of farmers in the state."
So while Monsanto might be a convenient boogeyman, the actual issues are deeper and more structural.
In other news, meet the Gympie Gympie - more proof that Australia hates its occupants and wants them to suffer.
Within one season his crop was 95-98% identifiable as containing Monsanto's patented gene. One season.
Yes? And? That's basically what you would expect to happen. If you spread something on your crops that kills most of them, and then use the seed from the survivors, then 100% of the next generation will be the descendants of those survivors. Given that roundup was used, and Monsanto's modification conferred roundup resistance, which is uncommon elsewhere, that seems to be a likely result.
This is actually like the example given of using Microsoft Office or Adobe Photoshop without a license and selling the product you make with them. Quite exactly like that example, now that I think of it. That's a perfect analogue.
It would be a good analogue if Office or Photoshop were things that got attached to previously open source programs, with Microsoft or Adobe then claiming ownership of the whole thing and preventing people from using standard procedure to develop the code further.
Did you read the article? Because if you did, you are constantly misrepresenting the facts.
The farmer did not kill the rest of his harvest because that would have left him an entire season without profits. He divided the seeds, and then only used the ones he knew were genetically modified to replant. He was not attempting to breed a roundup resistant strain. By his own admisssion he knew that the canola he was replanting was derived from Monsanto's patents. His argument was that since the canola grew on his property, he could replicate them at will. The court disagreed, which is not unreasonable.
Unless you make the argument that companies should not be able to profit from genetic research, which, if that's the case, then make that argument. Either read the article, or, if you have, stop misrepresenting the content.
In other news, meet the Gympie Gympie - more proof that Australia hates its occupants and wants them to suffer.
The British really lucked out with their choice of prison colony. There are several other species of "stinging trees" in Australia, and funnel-web spiders' venom only works on primates. It really is as if everything there hates humans.
So, about a month ago, some jackass paid his filing fee and got an absolutely abominable ballot measure filed with the California AG...The Sodomite Suppression Act. It starts with:
a) The abominable crime against nature known as buggery, called also sodomy, is a monstrous evil that Almighty God, giver of freedom and liberty, commands us to suppress on pain of our utter destruction even as he overthrew Sodom and Gomorrha.
And goes downhill from there. The long and short of it is that said jackass doesn't just want to make homosexuality an executable offense, but also one that anyone can enforce if the state proves unwilling to. While the act it hopefully dead, now that it has reached the signature gathering stage, it has spawned a poetic response.
What makes this bad news gone right is the ballot measure filed in response. While the filer is aware that the law would be unconstitutional, she felt the need to make a point with her Intolerant Jackass Act, the meat of which is:
c) Any person, herein known as an "Intolerant Jackass," who brings forth a ballot measure that suggests the killing of gays and/or lesbians, whether this measure is called the Sodomite Suppression Act or is known by some other name, shall be required to attend sensitivity training for at least three (3) hours per month for twelve (12) consecutive months. In addition, the offender or "Intolerant Jackass" must donate $5000 to a pro-gay or pro-lesbian organization.
In other words, "Eat a dick, you fundie homophobe!"
Given some of the political homophobic bullshit that has been going on lately, this is so perfectly priceless
While I agree that being insensitive is an issue, so is being oversensitive.
In other news, meet the Gympie Gympie - more proof that Australia hates its occupants and wants them to suffer.
The British really lucked out with their choice of prison colony. There are several other species of "stinging trees" in Australia, and funnel-web spiders' venom only works on primates. It really is as if everything there hates humans.
The flowchart of "will Australian fauna, flora, or geological feature kill you" is just a rectangle box marked "yes".
In other news, meet the Gympie Gympie - more proof that Australia hates its occupants and wants them to suffer.
The British really lucked out with their choice of prison colony. There are several other species of "stinging trees" in Australia, and funnel-web spiders' venom only works on primates. It really is as if everything there hates humans.
Basically, if it's venomous there, it will either kill you (funnel-web spider, blue ring octopus), or make you wish it did (stinging tree, platypus).
From what I understand, a lot of that comes from the isolation of the place, which resulted in the evolutionary path taking a different route from the rest of the world.
Monsanto has a patent on their specific seeds. They do not have a patent on Roundup (glyphosate) resistant crops in general, just their specific seeds, which are engineered and optimized for yield, Roundup resistance, and the area they are selling (to various degrees).
And they do so standing on the shoulders of giants. Previous generations worked to breed and engineer their starting point, they make a small change, and require licensing fees to use or breed it. Even when that wasn't done for any of the previous generations of plants before theirs, and they have no issues with using that work without paying for it, while requiring people to pay them for theirs.
They are not saying that farmers can no longer grow their own glyphosate resistant crops. They are not saying that other companies cannot produce glyphosate resistant crops. The only thing they are saying is that, as their patent has been legally granted, intentionally growing and selling their plants without a license is against the law, and at that point they don't even sue for damages, they just force the farmer to stop. They are acting completely reasonably, and no matter how much you insist that they prevent any selective breeding program that could compete with them, you will still be incorrect.
They don't technically say that, but if anyone tries breeding glyphosate resistant crops in an open-air field, they may discover otherwise. Since any trace seeds or pollination would quickly end up massively amplified in any such scenario, which could then result in legal charges against them. (Yes, not quite what happened in the listed case, but the results of that case have implications here) And it may seem to not be a big problem if you're looking at only a single such gene that you have to work around, but the more that are patented, the harder it becomes to work around them.
As for your "and?" The point is that, despite the media perception about the event, the farmer intentionally cultivated and sold Monsanto plants without a license. Regardless of what your stance is on intellectual property, that is still a clear violation of it, and pretending you can't understand how people would see Monsanto's side is silly. You can disagree with something and understand it.
Yes, the farmer did something which would be legal with any other plants but this one. That's why it's an issue, it's a major change to how things have been done. And I'm not saying I can't understand people siding with allowing patents for genetic information. It may very well be the case that providing patents to private corporations provides for the public good better than public research and mutual scientific collaboration would. It's just not something that should be assumed a priori. Or assumed that if it works better in other areas, that it necessarily works in all areas.
In other news, meet the Gympie Gympie - more proof that Australia hates its occupants and wants them to suffer.
The British really lucked out with their choice of prison colony. There are several other species of "stinging trees" in Australia, and funnel-web spiders' venom only works on primates. It really is as if everything there hates humans.
Basically, if it's venomous there, it will either kill you (funnel-web spider, blue ring octopus), or make you wish it did (stinging tree, platypus).
From what I understand, a lot of that comes from the isolation of the place, which resulted in the evolutionary path taking a different route from the rest of the world.
And you guys all bitched After Earth was not realistic with "everything evolved to kill humans" HA Australia proves you fucking wrong!
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
I thought that Gympie Gympie was a super toxic thing I'd heard about before, but its not..its the Machineel, which I would say is a strong contender for the "Fuck You, Humanity" title of the plant world.
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By "isolate the GMO" you mean "took the seeds from the potatoes that didn't die and used them to plant more potatoes".
And again, how would he have even known for sure they lived specifically because of this GMO?
The way you word it, he used his chemistry set in the barn to extract and steal the GMO. Which as absurd as that is, were it even remotely how it happened, you might have a point. Or even if he took the low tech approach of jumping his neighbor's fence and stealing his crops directly. Instead he just replanted his own crops.
Your digital equivalent is still wrong though. What he sold was the yield of the plants. The digital equivalent would be pirating a copy of adobe photoshop and selling the art you make with it. Or like installing pirated Windows on the computers at your company.
Then the implication of that is that the herbicide has a 100% fatality rate on non-GMO crops, because that's the only conceivable reason some of his crops survived.
Which means holy fuck that really is a protection racket. "Buy our crops, or fuck your crops."
But it's not like farmers are going around spraying others fields, that would be expensive and pointless, why would you waste herbicide on your neighbour?
Possible for winds to blow that herbicide to your neighbor?
There was a funny moment with one of Monsanto's lobbyists on french tv claiming you can drink round up being offered to do so and telling them he would not, so I guess YOU can drink it, but not that guy.
pleasepaypreacher.net
And goes downhill from there. The long and short of it is that said jackass doesn't just want to make homosexuality an executable offense, but also one that anyone can enforce if the state proves unwilling to. While the act it hopefully dead, now that it has reached the signature gathering stage, it has spawned a poetic response.
What makes this bad news gone right is the ballot measure filed in response. While the filer is aware that the law would be unconstitutional, she felt the need to make a point with her Intolerant Jackass Act, the meat of which is:
In other words, "Eat a dick, you fundie homophobe!"
- John Stuart Mill
Did you read the case you are parroting? He specifically sprayed his crops with roundup (which, at the time, had a 100% fatality rate on non Roundup resistant crops) after realizing some of his crops on the property border survived being sprayed by roundup. He knew he had Monsanto products because he saw some of his border crops survived Monsanto brand weedkiller, proceeded to spray the rest of his crops with Monsanto brand weedkiller, and took the Monsanto brand weedkiller resistant crops (which is a GMO made by Monsanto) and replanted them. And Monsanto literally sued him to simply stop planting those crops. They didn't even take money from him; they literally settled at "We know you intentionally killed all your crops that weren't resistant to our weedkiller, so you could identify and use our crops without a license. Stop doing that."
And yes, it is very similar to a simple concept: Copying files. I can easily copy everything about Office onto a thumbdrive and bring it around, but if I were to be discovered using Office-thumbdrives as the primary means of access at a business, Microsoft could and would sue me. Monsanto is doing the same thing here; they are specifically suing people who intentionally use their product without a license. They aren't even getting into the accidental cross-pollination issue, which is why suits against them have been thrown out, and they will specifically pay for damages and cleanup if you report your crop has some Monsanto crop in it. They're about as nice of an "evil corporation" as you can get while still attempting to actually sell their product.
That's bull. Yes, they will be made. There will also be slower innovation with less advances. Corporations having the ability to patent their discoveries in order to make a profit isn't new, and it isn't inherently bad; it's part of what allows capitalism to work in an age dominated by technology rather than labor. Even then, there'd be no reason for educational institutions to mass produce or refine any of their GMOs for use in commercial agriculture, which would, again, mean that somebody has to foot the bill to get the ball rolling there.
There are herbicides besides Roundup. The specific good about Roundup is that, if you buy a Monsanto seed license, you can be basically guaranteed to kill all competing crops that are not Monsanto brand, which gives you a much better yield (and to our knowledge, Roundup isn't especially bad for the environment). If you don't want to/can't afford roundup+GMOs, you take the risk of lower crop yields and more diseases, but Monsanto and other farmers are not intentionally spraying your field with roundup; that would be illegal and expensive for them. If they wanted to kill your crops illegally, they could just burn them, but why would they want to callously break the law just to fuck you over?
To repeat: He did, in fact, take the seeds of potatoes that didn't die and plant them. He just did so after spraying his entire crop with Roundup, the Monsanto Brand Weedkiller that Kills Everything Not Monsanto Brand. It isn't even like he took the "hardy" strain that survived his neighbor's accidental weedkiller and replanted it; he made sure he was only using stuff that survived Roundup by killing everything else.
That is definitely a possibility, given it's what happened with the case being discussed, but that would likely be either a minor amount of land affected by the pesticide, or grounds for a lawsuit against the other farmer for negligence. It's not really an argument that Monsanto is a protection racket; with as much negative coverage they get over actions where they are unquestionably (by current law) in the right, if there was a serious issue with Roundup contamination it'd be everywhere.
The state AG has since asked the courts for permission to kill it with fire.
chair to Creation and then suplex the Void.
I misunderstood. I thought the herbicide that was killing his crops was drifting in from his neighbors' fields.
It's all good. It's such a rough topic that it's hard to get people to read and listen to what actually happens sometimes. It really annoys me that Monsanto is held up as the worst of the worst, when they are for all intents and purposes, fairly fucking benign for a world spanning megacorp.
And he should be in the right to do so. If Monsanto's crops didn't exist, and he was attempting to breed a roundup resistant plant, he would have done the same thing. Which means that a ruling in Monsanto's favor, basically makes breeding for favorable traits illegal if a crop which has been patented does something similar. Breeding for favorable traits has massively improved agriculture across human history, GMO should work with that, not prevent it. Any ruling that doesn't allow for both is a bad one. (And nothing has a 100% fatality rate at every dose, there will always be some level of roundup that you can use, that will result in some plants dying, and others, not.)
There would still be a place for commercial agriculture there, to fill that last step, to mass produce and refine. It would be a bit more difficult without patents, but you can still make use of trade secrets, and stay ahead by simply being a generation ahead of your competitors, and being efficient and convenient in mass production.
And there's also the argument that many patents may have a net negative effect on innovation and advances. Yes, it encourages investment and money, but it also drastically increases the barriers to entry for people who would contribute further innovations, who have to re-invent the wheel, reproduce everything from scratch, or work off of decades old designs, rather than making modifications to more recent strains. And, because of this ruling, even actively weed every plant that anyone has made any modifications to, or face legal troubles.
If company A makes a modification to a plant, and company B makes a different modification to that plant, and both are great, and it would be great if you could put them both together in the same plant, or breed the two plants together, well, then, you're legally screwed, because it's not going to happen. That's certainly not encouraging innovation and advances. Even if it balances out that patents are a net benefit in this situation, it's obviously not the case that patents are strictly beneficial for innovation and advancement, or even net beneficial in all instances.
Within one season his crop was 95-98% identifiable as containing Monsanto's patented gene. One season.
This is actually like the example given of using Microsoft Office or Adobe Photoshop without a license and selling the product you make with them. Quite exactly like that example, now that I think of it. That's a perfect analogue.
Monsanto was in their right to sue. The only outcome of the trial was the farmer was told to stop using canola descended from Monsanto's genetically modified crop, or pay for the license. This is much, much, much more reasonable than the thousands of lawsuits brought by RIAA and MPAA and various software companies. RIAA demanded thousands of dollars from kids downloading songs. This farmer was profiting directly from using Monsanto's technology without their permission and was simply told to stop.
At this point, and in this case, sticking to your guns about this being a terrible thing makes you look like a fanatic.
When a screenwriter or novelist writes something that is extraordinarily close to an existing product, even if they came by it honestly, are they able to sell it and profit from it?
No. No they are not.
He could certainly breed a roundup resistant plant if he wished to. Again, going back to the technology issue: OpenOffice is completely legal. Copying Office's code and selling it as OpenOffice would not be. He did not attempt, in any meaningful fashion, to create his own roundup resistant plant; he simply used Monsanto's plant without permission.
There is nothing illegal about breeding for favorable crops even with GMO patents, and from what I recall the actually scary potential abuses, such as the human gene patenting of the mid 2000s, was ruled unconstutitional by a 9-0 vote. The only thing that is illegal is, to keep beating a dead horse, "ripping the source code" by simply planting seeds you do not have a license for, or (I suppose) attempting to create "derivative works" by taking roundup resistant crops you don't have a license for and breeding them to significantly differ.
Yes, roundup isn't 100% effective in all cases, but Glyphosate resistant plants are incredibly uncommon (aside from Monsanto products) and it is very efficient at killing regular plants. In even a reasonable dose, such as the one that killed the farmer's crops on the border, it would be obvious that the crops that survived are incredibly likely to be Roundup resistant (and thus Monsanto products). The fact the farmer sprayed the rest of his land with Roundup furthered the case that he intentionally acted such that he would be using Monsanto seeds; this is not a case where there's a 30% chance the plants that survived were simply lucky.
A bit more difficult is a massive understatement. Monsanto is bigger (in terms of revenue) than the five largest charities in the world combined, and your suggestion is basically that charities and university research could sub-in for that? Just in terms of scale of research, Monsanto (and other seed companies) are so large that it would be incredibly difficult to replicate that by, essentially, sinking money in with no return on investment. And "trade secrets" might be useful for herbicide sales, but would be absolutely worthless for seed sales; it doesn't matter if other companies don't know how you modified your plants or what the modifications were, if it replicates itself they can still use it. For instance, if you could "grow" WD-40, I guarantee it would be patented today rather than simply a trade secret; they'd take their 20 years of sales rather than instantly allow competitors to sell their exact product.
Yes, it limits innovation to some extent, but that's because it allows innovation to be worth something. There would be no point for a major corporation to invest in building the wheel if they had no guarantee they could sell any products without competitors (or their market) getting it for free. Yes, it does mean that Monsanto has several advanced plant strains that other people can't pick at for twenty years. While that may be worse than the ideal of the entire agriculture industry working together to research plants and grow more food for society, it's far better than the practical result: Everybody could work together with less money and less expertise than Monsanto has, and we'd still be behind in terms of product.
For Company A and Company B mixing their plants: They do! Monsanto licenses the absolute shit out of their plants to other seed companies. The difference is that, once again, the billions of dollars Monsanto can make by providing mass quantities of easy to grow and more efficient crops allows them (and their competitors) to spend a lot more money, hire a lot more people, and cultivate a lot more plants than could be done by university or charity research. Yes, it is not "ideal" because if you removed the attempts to make profit but kept the same amount of money "in the game," then there could be a lot more innovation, but the only reason the money is in the game to begin with is because there is profit to be made.
EDIT: There is one way that GMOs could keep ahead of the game even without patents: Terminator seeds. These are GMO plants that specifically produce sterile or incredibly inferior offspring, requiring farmer's to (essentially) suffer from an even harsher kind of licensing than current GMO patents force by buying seeds every year. And big, evil Monsanto specifically pledged to never sell such seeds! While it may be a political move, it's likely that the current patent system encourages Monsanto and other commercial giants to produce farmer-friendly plants in order to turn a profit in the long term and to keep R&D simpler; the only way commercial entities could stay in the game without patent protection is to "trade secret" new crops of Terminator seeds every year, which would fuck the farmers over even more, but would likely be the only way to keep spending billions on R&D.
It would be a good analogue if Office or Photoshop were things that got attached to previously open source programs, with Microsoft or Adobe then claiming ownership of the whole thing and preventing people from using standard procedure to develop the code further.
Monsanto has a patent on their specific seeds. They do not have a patent on Roundup (glyphosate) resistant crops in general, just their specific seeds, which are engineered and optimized for yield, Roundup resistance, and the area they are selling (to various degrees).
They are not saying that farmers can no longer grow their own glyphosate resistant crops. They are not saying that other companies cannot produce glyphosate resistant crops. The only thing they are saying is that, as their patent has been legally granted, intentionally growing and selling their plants without a license is against the law, and at that point they don't even sue for damages, they just force the farmer to stop. They are acting completely reasonably, and no matter how much you insist that they prevent any selective breeding program that could compete with them, you will still be incorrect.
As for your "and?" The point is that, despite the media perception about the event, the farmer intentionally cultivated and sold Monsanto plants without a license. Regardless of what your stance is on intellectual property, that is still a clear violation of it, and pretending you can't understand how people would see Monsanto's side is silly. You can disagree with something and understand it.
Especially since I'm pretty sure Monsanto could feed the majority of the world if they wished too.
They do wish to. But they wish to get paid while doing it.
chair to Creation and then suplex the Void.
Even so, Monsanto has increased the world carrying capacity for food by a large amount and made money while doing so. Again, I believe that in an ideal world, they could manage to get as much funding and R&D done to produce such mass quantities of food without the need to be driven by profit, but I seriously doubt they would be able to do so. Likewise, I do not believe that Monsanto simply giving away their product as-is and losing all their R&D funding would produce more food, long term, than having them continue to make a profit and reinvest it in more GMOs. I can't exactly call Monsanto "good," but I don't see any reason to call them evil; every indication is that they're as benign as you could be for a massive corporation, given their lawsuits stop at "don't steal our stuff" rather than punitive damages, they license their product extensively and allow stack-rights (so you can crossbreed Monsanto products with other products and sell it, if you can afford the R&D), and they don't fuck over the farmers with Terminator seeds even though it would likely be very profitable in the short term.
EDIT: Also, when I say infrastructure, I would mean the supply chains, farmland, water supplies, and production facilities (e.g. fertilizer plants, storage silos) that any country suffering from hunger would need to sustain themselves. A large majority of that isn't in Monsanto's wheelhouse, so even if you feel that they're evil for not giving up all their money in order to solve world hunger, they'd be less evil than e.g. Facebook (who has a similar zero level of experience in setting up the infrastructure of impoverished nations, but has a lot more money with which to do so).
Yes but creating hardy easily grown strains of foods seems to be something that's on their playing card. If they put their research department on the task we'd probably have ten different strains of drought resistant grains and vegetables helping to feed the world. Instead they seem more interested in patent trolling food.
I'm sorry, copyright trolling.
If that farmer didn't use Roundup to killed his non-GMO wheat and instead let nature take its course (the more hardy, energy efficient, quicker growing plant -always- wins; aka the Monsanto GMO wheat in this case) and fill his field over time, Monsanto would have still sued him.
We could always talk about how Monsanto is driving farmers in India to suicide because of the particular strain of GMO cotton they're selling over there. For ridiculous prices. And which seems rather prone to dying off.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto#India
for a quick reference.
I would also read your wiki article before throwing out an example from the controversy section. Every source but the Indian government absolved Monsanto of blame, and the government was even blamed by its own sub organizations for setting up a poor system for farmers.
Finally, no, if he had not intentionally sprayed his canola (not wheat) it would not have taken over, and Monsanto has no history of suing when farmers do not intentionally cultivate their crop.
I would suggest reading further into the issues rather than assuming Monsanto must be evil because GMOs/patents/press.
You mean The IFPRI, funded in part by CGIAR? Which counts Monsanto as a research partner and probably a funding partner although good luck finding the actual donations given by private companies.
because that's like the only organization saying that the bt cotton being twice as expensive and prone to crop failures isn't driving people who make their livelihood from growing cotton to commit suicide
it's also based in Washington D.C.
Well, from the piece you posted, when the government had a major university study the matter, they determined that the actual problems were more strutural:
So while Monsanto might be a convenient boogeyman, the actual issues are deeper and more structural.
In other news, meet the Gympie Gympie - more proof that Australia hates its occupants and wants them to suffer.
Did you read the article? Because if you did, you are constantly misrepresenting the facts.
The farmer did not kill the rest of his harvest because that would have left him an entire season without profits. He divided the seeds, and then only used the ones he knew were genetically modified to replant. He was not attempting to breed a roundup resistant strain. By his own admisssion he knew that the canola he was replanting was derived from Monsanto's patents. His argument was that since the canola grew on his property, he could replicate them at will. The court disagreed, which is not unreasonable.
Unless you make the argument that companies should not be able to profit from genetic research, which, if that's the case, then make that argument. Either read the article, or, if you have, stop misrepresenting the content.
The British really lucked out with their choice of prison colony. There are several other species of "stinging trees" in Australia, and funnel-web spiders' venom only works on primates. It really is as if everything there hates humans.
The flowchart of "will Australian fauna, flora, or geological feature kill you" is just a rectangle box marked "yes".
Basically, if it's venomous there, it will either kill you (funnel-web spider, blue ring octopus), or make you wish it did (stinging tree, platypus).
From what I understand, a lot of that comes from the isolation of the place, which resulted in the evolutionary path taking a different route from the rest of the world.
They don't technically say that, but if anyone tries breeding glyphosate resistant crops in an open-air field, they may discover otherwise. Since any trace seeds or pollination would quickly end up massively amplified in any such scenario, which could then result in legal charges against them. (Yes, not quite what happened in the listed case, but the results of that case have implications here) And it may seem to not be a big problem if you're looking at only a single such gene that you have to work around, but the more that are patented, the harder it becomes to work around them.
Yes, the farmer did something which would be legal with any other plants but this one. That's why it's an issue, it's a major change to how things have been done. And I'm not saying I can't understand people siding with allowing patents for genetic information. It may very well be the case that providing patents to private corporations provides for the public good better than public research and mutual scientific collaboration would. It's just not something that should be assumed a priori. Or assumed that if it works better in other areas, that it necessarily works in all areas.
And you guys all bitched After Earth was not realistic with "everything evolved to kill humans" HA Australia proves you fucking wrong!
pleasepaypreacher.net
That is possibly the most boring thing I've seen in this thread.
MWO: Adamski
are you the Anti-Christ.