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Comment by putzdown | Hacker News Reader

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?

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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?

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.

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.

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.

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