Proplifting, Plant Piracy, and Dumpster Chocolates | Hacker News Reader

Proplifting, Plant Piracy, and Dumpster Chocolates

taylor.town

49 pointszdw36 comments

Rules of the Game:

- If it is a big box department store, succulents and others will shed propable things on the ground and in the containers because they do not care for them properly. Take those and feel no guilt. Those usually go straight to the bin.

- If it is a mom-and-pop store, ask a worker, as they may also use those for their stock or they may ask for a tiny fee. Support your locals.

When in doubt, ask. Commercial stores, they do not get paid enough to care.

Happy hunting, future green technothumbs.

You could always ask a worker at the big box too…

Good luck finding one though

My local place is swarming with them, just not at the registers.

why are they needed at the registers when they're all self checkout?

because the self checkout registers an exception has occurred, and needs a staff person to assist, so you end up needing an employee to help anyway.

right, and you have to then find said employee causing the entire checkout process to take longer than if it was actually run by a human is my point

I’m missing something. Why would privately propagating an endangered plant be any kind of theft, crime, or immoral action? I get that cutting or tearing off a piece of someone’s plant is wrong, but if the plant has dropped a piece that can be propagated, where is the harm in taking it?

No, you have it right, but you're missing human nature.

If there are a lot of people who want to propagate a rare plant... especially easily accessible ones in open-to-the-public gardens... not all people will wait for a leaf to fall.

Also, if you're in a private place (such as a plant nursery or a supermarket), you don't have a right to a dropped piece - everything of the shop belongs to the shop, even if you think they'll treat it as rubbish. If a bolt falls out of the display racks, you can't just say "ooh, free bolt on the floor, I'm keeping it", you know?

My partner works at a botanic gardens and they have to deal with this a lot.

For most plants, taking discarded material would be fine, but they have some rare plants that are subject to international diplomatic agreements - to paraphrase, "we will give you a specimen of this plant, usually in exchange for some other favour, but only you may grow it". If those get loose, it can spark an incident and potentially cause that international cooperation to cease.

These kinds of agreements sometimes happen for countries where previous expeditions have taken commercially valuable crops home and built an industry around them - e.g. the British stealing rubber tree seeds from Brazil in 1876, in order to set up competing plantations in south-east Asia.

And of course it's difficult to know which plants are covered by something like that, unless you're very up on your international botanical politics and are extremely good at telling similar species apart.

Picking stuff up off the ground works for a tiny minority of plants, mostly succulents. Most aroid plants (read: popular tropical houseplants) needs a growth “node” to propagate, and it would be very strange for it to somehow detach a node on its own and still have that node be alive and propagateable.

AFAIK — I’ve stolen many a cutting from my apartment complex (like, 3) but never tried roaming Home Depot.

Also the whole “endangered” bit is just distraction, IMO. Even if these plants were endangered, why do we care about them in particular…? Just because they’re pretty? They’re native to islands in Southeast Asia, I don’t think anything we do to plants in America will change their status — other than supporting poaching industries ofc, which is also a fascinating problem in the aquarium/fish community.

> Ion’t think anything we do to plants in America will change their status

The data hoarding community seems to have a similar mentality sometimes. Collecting petabytes of media will not somehow

The point of the plant from the botanical garden is that they cut the actual plant.

Which can introduce fungal infections, especially if you don't clean your tools beforehand. It would be tragic to take a cutting from someone's plant and then the original plant dies. It's even more tragic if it's a botanical garden where they're trying to preserve some of the plants for everyone to appreciate.

Unlicensed reproduction of intellectual property

In UK supermarkets there are grapes, by buying them you agree only to consuming them and not propagating because they are GMO and IP-protected.

In the UK you can be subject to license agreements that you were never made aware of and did not consent to?

You cannot. I believe the OP is talking nonsense.

It is, however, possible to patent genetic modifications in the UK (and the EU), and for the duration of the patent, require anyone growing plants produced from those modifications to buy a (compulsary) license from you.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directive_on_the_legal_protect...

There are packs of grapes with that text printed on the packaging. The same goes for some flowers in pots you can buy where it's printed on the label. I doubt any court of law would consider that legally binding.

The same thing happens in the US. There's a court case where someone put a EULA inside of a CD packaging and made opening the CD sufficient to trigger the EULA. They won, making that an acceptable easy to force a license on someone

It sounds like you're misrepresenting the case https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ProCD,_Inc._v._Zeidenberg

The facts were:

1. There was a notice on the outside of the box saying that use of the product was subject to an EULA. Zeidenberg was not bound by that.

2. Zeidenberg opened the box, opened the CD case, put the CD in the drive and ran the software installer on the CD, which presented him with the full EULA and the opportunity to agree to it, or the opportunity to cancel and return the software for a refund. He clicked "Agree" to that.

It was the clicking "Agree" after having a chance to review the EULA that bound him to it, not opening the packaging.

Also, if he was not offered the opportunity to disagree and return the software, it would not be binding.

It's unlikely it will ever be legal to claiming someone's actions before they've been presented the full license text count as assent to said license.

Would a store accept a return of opened software in 1996? In my experience most had a policy forbidding it.

It depends on the software. It's very much like coupons too with their "participating retailers only" clauses, there will be provision for that in the contract between the distributor and the retailer. If the software says you should return it, there'll have be some agreement to allow that, either directly to the retailer or indirectly to the software vendor.

IP is a capitalistic idea that could do with some re-visioning (reduction to removal/replacement).

But ecological disaster can form from careless/reckless plant reproduction. Some balance has to be struck.

I sometimes think it's slightly funny that theres a lot of people who enjoy the aesthetics of anarchism but who also get squeamish about "crimes" that most ordinary people wouldn't worry about (eg picking up a few plant cuttings from the floor of a botanical garden)

Self policing is often better than letting the lawyer or the cop police for you.

Anarchism isn't necessarily about doing crimes, but structures as a whole. An anarchist commune would self police, similar to this community self-policing what's fair game within their community.

A different form of anarchism, Libertarianism, places a lot more value on "I do what I want" style freedom and is often against self policing, ie "not my land, not my business". That attitude carried over to diesel truck modding, and as a result the feds had to step in, and hold performance shops and owners accountable for modding trucks to dump particulate. Had the libertarian style truck owners self-policed, maybe they wouldn't have lost out on a large chunk of their performance after-market.

note: this is not a comprehensive discussion of anarchism/libertarianism. Just explaining the op was misled on their assumptions.

I don't think people have a problem with someone picking up a plant cutting from the ground. Most likely their problem is with someone who cuts of a piece from a plant for themselves.

(And I'm being a bit uncharitable here of course, I guess it's also a sign of a nuanced and considered morality, in a way)

My proplifting code is a bit simpler: I don't take cuttings, but I will pick up loose leaves or other plant parts from the floor, shelf, or wherever they have landed. Succulents in particular will often drop leaves, which can be quite easy to propagate.

You wouldn't download a plant

I would _seed_ them

The previous owner of my home was gifted a cutting of Franklinia alatamaha by the Arnold Arboretum in Boston. I am now the custodian of an amazing and extremely rare tree.

https://arboretum.harvard.edu/stories/against-all-odds-growi...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklinia

The owner and arboretum both must have known what they were doing when they planted it in my yard because it is thriving and in full flower right now.

I was at the Brooklyn botanical garden a number of years ago and I remember a hirsute old man in a long duster jacket was just walking through the tropical greenhouse we were in casually grabbing handfuls of plants as he walked by and stuffing them in his pockets with no real care in the world.

My partner works at a botanic gardens.

A while ago, somebody walked out of the gardens having stolen an entire small tree.

Some people are shameless.

If you want a low down why proplifting is perhaps stealing this is an ok video - https://www.tiktok.com/@smithsgardentown/video/7395326610490...

TL;DR

A lot of proplifters are not comfortable at mom and pop stores, but most big name stores get supplied from mom and pop nurseries.

Real people put a lot of effort in suppling plants, they should be rewarded and taking part of a plant off the floor without permission is technically stealing.

I think what annoys people is the attitude it's a 'right' to proplift. Dumpster divers at least put in effort.

Not trying to do a gotcha here, but what is your opinion on "ordinary" digital piracy? I kinda feel like most people consider that broadly morally ok (in moderation), and proplifting doesn't really strike me as much different in any way (loads of underpaid passionate people work on big movies and games too)

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