Hacker News Reader

Comment by lucisferre | Hacker News Reader

Wow the bias inherent in the authors support of GMO (and Monsanto) is dripping. I mean, at least he's honest about it, but it's hard to keep reading after the first paragraph or so.

Here is a different bias.

GMO is like a magic word processor that outputs instantly DRM'd books which then can go out and make all the other books on the same shelf the property of the author too, which you now have to pay him for.

View on HN

    > GMO is like a magic word processor that outputs
    > instantly DRM'd books [..]

It doesn't need to be like that though. GMO exists without IP law. The two concepts are not inherently tied.

Yeah I was being somewhat intentionally hyperbolic. There isn't (or shouldn't) be any difference between the challenges currently inherent in software IP and "bio IP". However right now all the players in bio IP are huge and fairly clumsy (though that's changing I hear, with bootstrapper generic engineering labs starting to appear) it is kind of remenisicent of the SCO lawsuit days in some ways.

However on the subject of litigious entities Monsanto certainly dishes out far more than they get. Just do a google search for "Monsanto sues" to see what I mean.

Edit: Err down voted for admitting hyperbole, really?

You were probably downvoted for the last paragraph, in which you go right back to harping on Monsanto's litigious tendencies, which you just admitted were essentially a red herring.

I admitted I was being hyperbolic in the previous post where I didn't mention their litigious tendencies.

They do have very litigious tendencies from what I can see, but I'm happy for anyone who disagrees to refute the statement. Takes a bit longer than down voting I suppose.

If you read the details of that particular case it's a lot more complex. GMO isn't like that because there are lots of genetically modified organisms that come with out licensing agreements.

One farmer in particular decided to see if he could use normal plants to reproduce Monsanto seed which he succeded in and then got sued because its a violation of the agreement he agreed to. The neighboring farmer bs is just a smokescreen.

All the food we eat is GMO because the genome of a plant naturally changes, now we just do GMO efficiently. Yes, there are risks, but natural GMO could produce a terminator gene as well. As much as I don't mind GMO I'm fully in support of labeling, especially the idea that those that don't use GMO can label as such.

The true issue which is ignored is that diversity in crops must be maintained. Monsanto wouldn't want this to be a topic though because that would be contrary to their goals; Diversity means hundreads if not thousands of variations in neighbouring crops, not just one or a few. If society supports the smaller farmers, in case their crop is hit that year, then they can survive financially / pay bills. This is in fact the safest way to do it.

Why is this being downvoted? Are people assuming we can out-engineer nature forever? Single-breed farming makes for a brittle food chain.

It seems about as reasonable as assuming nature can out-engineer nature forever. Classifying changes wrought by man as somehow fundamentally different than any other changes is a fallacy.

Technically it's not a fallacy it's a premise, though a debatable one. These things are fundamentally different, if even just by the definition of nature and man and given that we don't fully understand natures mechanisms ourselves. I agree though, generalizing our own engineering is bad because it isn't "natural" is easily refutable.

I will suggest this though, nature has been out-engineering nature for eons longer than we have, so if you want to get technical it gets the benefit of the doubt here. Our own tinkering has yielded incredible boons and shouldn't be quickly dismissed but we can't ignore the potential dangers and the history of global risk human greed and power seems willing to incur to get what it wants. That's all.

Also reading the grandparent, I don't think his point was that man can't out engineer nature, but that there is a heavy risk inherent in Monsanto's corporate strategy of trying to creating super breeds and monopolize markets with them to the exclusion of diversity (note this is generally considered bad for the market not just nature, call diversity a natural law if you will). So both child comments are arguing for and against a straw man, which, again if you want to be technical about things, is a fallacy.

Full disclosure: I love me some heirloom vegetables from my farm share (dirty hippy I know!)

Is my post or the parent somehow committing this fallacy? I explicitly used the same verb for genetic modification on behalf of both subjects: man and nature. The distinction between the subjects is because bacteria and insects ('nature') will devour all of humankind's nutritional resources if people don't continually labor to prevent it. It's a speciesist distinction, but not a fallacious one.

I don't think it is reasonable to assume anything but heat death will win the resource battle in this universe.

Man's changes are abrupt and discrete. We are not outside of nature but we rock the boat pretty hard.

So essentially, we're capable of making quicker adjustments than most natural forces? If anything, that should make it easier for us to out-engineer nature, not harder.

That's like saying that deregulated financial instruments made it easier for us to out-engineer the market. It looked like it worked, for a while, but it turned out there were... downsides. When a worldwide monoculture crashes, it's going to be more difficult to effect a food bailout.

Regulated financial instruments are a monoculture.

Besides, what makes you think that regulators get things right? Even if you ignore regulatory capture, regulators are imperfect, have less information than market participants have, and have their own goals.

Well said.

Imagine the horror: New: Microsoft Corn95! We want to see Corn95 planted in every field. It will be the corn of choice for Enterprise farmers everywhere!

New! Symantec BlightCheck! automatically scans your crops for blights brought on by passing bird and insect traffic. In today's age of connected farms, you need BlightCheck!

New! MicroSoft CropWall! Seal your crops inside a protected environment!

Ah, monoculture.

The neighboring farmer bs is just a smokescreen.

Says who? Why don't you do some research before calling something BS? Read this account: http://www.percyschmeiser.com/

Monsanto is trying to control nature. Bees don't care if they're picking up pollen from a "Monsanto Licensee" ! Why should the recipient of the pollen be held liable?

This is the case that is always mentioned, but the facts in the case are overwhelmingly in Monsanto's favor. If this is the only case detractors have, then, yes, I'd say that "The neighboring farmer bs is just a smokescreen."

I am unaware of any case in which an innocent farmer was a legitimate victim of accidental transfer. Can you please cite another source?

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto_Canada_Inc._v._Schmeis...

Edit: Please also read ahelwer's comment further down.

Monsanto's claim in that case was that they had informed him the previous year that part of his field was contaminated, and he responded by intentionally planting seeds from the crops they had told him were Roundup Ready. They never tried to claim that somebody who accidentally gets their plants owes them money.

(And before anybody accuses me of being a Monsanto fanboy or something: I really don't care about this issue. I just decided to actually do some research after reading like 10 different rants against Monsanto in one day, and I found that although Monsanto sound like dicks, people still seem to feel the need to exaggerate.)

> Monsanto's claim in that case was that they had informed him the previous year that part of his field was contaminated, and he responded by intentionally planting seeds from the crops they had told him were Roundup Ready.

Why shouldn't he?

Because Monsanto holds a patent on that technology. Their claim was patent infringement.

If iPhones hacked into Android phones on the same network and installed iOS, would Apple have any case against the folks who subsequently used that iOS installation on their Android devices?

I can't see the commonalities you're trying to draw between the actual scenario Monsanto thought happened (guy accidentally acquired their seed, intentionally decided to grow it and sell it instead of his own seed) and the scenario you're presenting (person accidentally gets OS installed on their phone, continues using phone).

Accidentally acquired their seed? He grew his own crops, collected his own seeds, and re-planted that seed the next year, like pretty much every farmer in history has.

Monsanto's product contaminated his seeds, through no fault of his own. An apology, not a lawsuit, was in order.

Like I said, they're dicks, but they weren't quite doing what people try to say they were.

So what you're saying is they came around and said:

Oh, sorry, but we infected your field.

And by the way you're not allowed to use your own seeds (the ones produced by his field) anymore because we infected them.

Yes, basically. That isn't an unreasonable reading of patent law. If he had actually tried to apply Roundup to the crops or sell the seeds to other farmers, he probably would have lost the suit. As I understand it, he won because he wasn't actually using the patented technology, not because the patent was rendered void by the fact that the seeds were produced on his land.

The thing you have to realize about patents is that it doesn't matter if you yourself built the thing that implements the patent; what matters is just whether you're using the patented technology or not.

Which I find insane when it comes to crops. If the person had willfully taken some seeds and used them sure, but patent law really should have some sort of exemption for cases where the patented product is overtly trespassing. It's ridiculous that because some company patented a gene a farmer who never wanted the plant in the first place is limited in what he can do to his own property. (Can't use roundup, can't harvest his seeds, etc.)

It's a small step from this situation to creating a virus, patenting it and releasing it in the wild and calling all people that get the cold your property.

Patent ownership in this kind of case (the plants, not the people) needs to be dialed back.

Never mind a human virus. If Monsanto could create an airborn plant retrovirus they could potentially frame someone for stealing Monsanto seed and planting their entire farm.

More like they tried to make him throw all of his money in the garbage rather than infringe on their IP.

I'm curious to hear what other biological scientists in India and government officials and NGO officials in India who deal with food policy have to say about the issue.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com