Battling the ‘Monsanto law’ in Ghana | Hacker News Reader

Battling the ‘Monsanto law’ in Ghana

newint.org

46 pointsgivan70 comments

I'm an environmentalist and a humanitarian, and I want both of these things:

1. Freedom for Ghanaian farmers to plant their traditional crops. 2. Access for Ghanaian farmers to high-yield varietals developed by companies like Monsanto.

This article implies that the law makes goal #1 illegal, but if you read closely, it is just an implication, and not an outright statement. My current understanding is that goal #1 is not made illegal by this bill. Does anyone have any contradictory evidence?

My understanding of this law is that it adopts US-style IP laws for agriculture, which is a controversial idea. Supporters would say it creates incentives towards goal #2, because it's hard for Monsanto to sell self-reproducing technology at a profit without IP support. Detractors would say that it has other downsides. I don't think the detractors are wrong, but I have a question for anyone that's open to exchange views:

If you oppose this law, but support goal #2, what do you think will bring Monsanto into Ghana? I only see three options: a) this law, b) Monsanto writes Ghana off as a loss and sells their unprotectable technology, c) we legally compel Monsanto to write Ghana off as a loss.

Shawndrost - Id love to run an article related to this on Movemeback.com to engage the action and thoughts of African Diapora in the West. Really didn't expect to come across such content on HN - fantastic.C

The issue in the U.S. is that flowering plants seeds travel by wind. So farmer A who bought Monsanto seeds infects farmer Bs field, who then can no longer legally harvest the seeds from field B because they contain Monsanto IP. Not sure if this applies to crops in Ghana, but its true in the US.

No, it is not true in the US, which you will learn if you read the rest of this discussion.

Last night there was a fantastic story about C4 Rice here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8867365

In one of the comments a user said:

"What is the plan to deal with the backlash from uneducated people screaming about how bad GMO is?"

If you're wondering why that backlash is as strong as it is look no further than the kind of legal trickery on display here.

Monsanto is about as evil as it gets in the corporate arena, just one step below the likes of Bechtel.

It's easy for the farmers to stay out of Monsanto's way - don't use Monsanto seeds, stick to the seeds they have used before Monsanto came about.

A law reserving proliferation of GM seeds to inventors is no different than law preserving copyright in software. How can one support the latter and oppose the former?

Please read the article. It's about laws specifically created to stop farmers from saving seeds so they'll have to buy them from 'approved' sources.

I read the article. I think it's being deliberately obfuscatory. It did not make clear whether the restrictions would apply to all seeds, to a particular group of banked sends, or specifically to GMOs purchased with this provision already in the contract.

I suspect the reason they're waxing ambiguous is that it's the latter of that list and they want to make it sound more nefarious than it is.

Really? The article talks about what external parties think about why these laws are being written, but doesn't any provide any direct evidence. And none of those even talk about "approved" sources.

Until you cross-pollinate with Monsanto's seeds on accident, and they sue you for IP infringement.

Can you dig up any cases where this has actually happened, where the farmer hadn't previously signed a contract with Monsanto WRT to those very seeds?

Last time I saw a discussion about this on HN, perhaps a year or more ago, no one could. Per Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto#As_plaintiff):

While many lawsuits involve breach of Monsanto's Technology Agreement, farmers who have not signed this type of contract, but do use the patented seed, can also be found liable for violating Monsanto's patent. That said, Monsanto has stated it will not "exercise its patent rights where trace amounts of our patented seed or traits are present in farmer's fields as a result of inadvertent means." The Federal Circuit found that this assurance is binding on Monsanto, so that farmers who do not harvest more than a trace amount of Monsanto's patented crops "lack an essential element of standing" to challenge Monsanto's patents.

The closest you can come to that is Monsanto Canada Inc. v. Schmeiser in Canada of course; in this case he selected for Roundup Ready plants, like we discussed in the recent antibiotic resistance discussion (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8852487) which is not an innocent accident. The end of the Wikipedia Monsanto article notes:

"The court record shows, however, that it was not just a few seeds from a passing truck, but that Mr Schmeiser was growing a crop of 95–98% pure Roundup Ready plants, a commercial level of purity far higher than one would expect from inadvertent or accidental presence. The judge could not account for how a few wayward seeds or pollen grains could come to dominate hundreds of acres without Mr Schmeiser’s active participation, saying ‘...none of the suggested sources could reasonably explain the concentration or extent of Roundup Ready canola of a commercial quality evident from the results of tests on Schmeiser’s crop’" – in other words, the original presence of Monsanto seed on his land in 1997 was indeed inadvertent, but the crop in 1998 was entirely purposeful.

Let's for the moment assume that Monsanto sticks to its promise and will not sue farmers that have 'slight' (however that is defined) presence of the GMO within their otherwise normal crop.

If they use roundup (which farmers tend to do, roundup use preceded roundup ready crops by decades) and the GMO is more resistant to roundup than the regular crop it stands to reason that if the farmer simply saves seed from each crop and replants the next year that after a few cycles the percentage of GMO within that population will no longer be slight.

Seems like a long term problem to me.

What? Why would a farmer spray roundup on their crop that's mostly not Roundup resistant? That makes no sense; it makes even less sense to do this season after season.

Farmers have been using roundup long before roundup resistant crops came along.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glyphosate

Yes I know, but not to do what you are implying. Specifically, why would farmers spray their non-GMO corn, soybean, canola, etc with Roundup? It would kill most of their crop/harvest.

> Specifically, why would farmers spray their non-GMO corn, soybean, canola, etc with Roundup?

Because it works even with non-GMO crops (always has).

> It would kill most of their crop/harvest.

No it would not. Not sure where you got that idea, but with Roundup-ready crops you can use more roundup without affecting the crops in a negative way. Roundup can - and routinely is - diluted before application.

Crops will naturally tolerate some roundup, the pests it is working against can tolerate less (or so you hope).

As pests become more resistant you need more roundup, so at some point roundup resistant crops will see a larger benefit.

It's a question of timing and targets, not quantity.

This is one reason my question about farming background is relevant, from what you've been saying you clearly don't have this background, let alone have ever used (generic) Roundup yourself.

I've helped my father do so, in general weed killing applications, and he knows farmers who use the stuff for real, and just asked one, who said:

You never let Roundup touch the plants you're growing---it only works when a plant is growing, BTW, in a "plantostatic" way, like bacteriostatic, it inhibits the synthesis of some critical amino acids. If you don't have Roundup Ready seeds, you spray before planting or after harvest, or you make sure the spray hits weeds, not your plants.

That's because it's such a general killer of plants (assuming it can get inside, but that has no bearing on this discussion of genetics). And why it's so safe, animals cannot synthesize these amino acids (well, not without using one of the others as a precursor): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aromatic_amino_acids

So, no selection pressure on the crops themselves, unless you really screw up.

> And why it's so safe, animals cannot synthesize these amino acids

"So safe"? Hmm. Okay, it's not as toxic as other herbicides that people had been using before glyphosate showed up. I think the question of long-term low-level toxicity is still open.

Is there anything that would possibly, in principle, convince you it's safe?

Certainly: a long-term controlled study looking for health effects on people exposed to it, vs. a control group that isn't. 50 years should be adequate. (You said "in principle" :-)

Thanks! That's enlightening. So if I understood you right application of roundup on any non-resistant crop is in error, it is only to be used pre-emergence.

One time you can use it is pre-emergence of your crops; the weeds have to have emerged and be actively growing. Post-emergence of your crops, you have to spray carefully, but that's possible in some circumstances.

It would, in fact, result in so few survivors, unless of course started out in low concentrations, that it would be evidence of mens rea. As long as Monsanto is restricting their legal actions to those with "the intending mind", I'm not worried.

Roundup resistant crops are much more recent than widespread use of roundup.

I suspect that's going to be a very slight, probably negligible selection pressure, since you're not going to be spraying it on your growing crops. We're only talking reside in the soil, and it has a short half-life.

And from what I hear, this happens a LOT.

That's the problem with hearsay - it's hard to quantify, because it's hard to tell when it's just one instance repeated a hundred times, and when it's a hundred different events making a trend. Do you have examples, or better yet actual quantifiable data?

If you hear such, you should be able to provide more than one case like Monsanto Canada Inc. v. Schmeiser (see my other comment in this subthread), which is the closest I've ever heard.

Monsanto is not stupid.

The answer to that question is here:

http://www.monsanto.com/newsviews/pages/why-does-monsanto-su...

In a nutshell, most farmers settle rather than that they go to court. Either because they know they're in the wrong or because they can't afford to take on a corporation the size of Monsanto.

Indeed. The relevant language:

When farmers purchase a patented seed variety, they sign an agreement that they will not save and replant seeds produced from the seed they buy from us....

A very small percentage of farmers do not honor this agreement. Monsanto does become aware, through our own actions or through third-parties, of individuals who are suspected of violating our patents and agreements. Where we do find violations, we are able to settle most of these cases without ever going to trial.

That's because a lawsuit will be a slam dunk loss for the farmer. As every lawsuit actually filed has turned out to be. When you sign the contract, you are bound by its terms, you won't be able to get away with claiming ignorance afterwords.

I'm curious, you feel very strongly about this. Do you have any farming background? Parents raised on farms? Grew up in a farming region?

> I'm curious, you feel very strongly about this. Do you have any farming background? Parents raised on farms? Grew up in a farming region?

I live in a farming region right now.

But that has very little bearing on this, I simply think that there is something inherently wrong about copyright and/or patents on genetic sequences and/or organisms. Several of my close relationships are hip-deep in this subject both on the 'pro' and the 'con' side and my viewpoint is the result of lots of conversations and reading. I feel strongly about it because GMO could be (and possibly will be, see the C4 rice project) a huge benefit but we're actually using them on the international stage as a way to keep the third world under our heel and beholden to us in a way that they can't really refuse and we'll bribe our way there if we have to.

See Shell in Africa, Bechtel in Latin America (and Monsanto too for that matter) and so on. It's the new colonialism, now 'roundup ready'.

Not copyrights, no patents, you'd rather everyone live in genteel starvation, illness and early death than let them be exploited by eeeeevil corporations?

As our friendly grad student in the C4 rice project discussion noted, 100 years of this sort of thing has made famine rare and lifted a billion people out of starvation (I knew the world had changed when I read in The Economist in 1982-3 that INDIA was sending relief grain to Ethiopia).

As for the "keep the third world under our heel and beholden to us", a lot of us aren't that Manichean and therefore your position falls flat.

> Not copyrights, no patents, you'd rather everyone live in genteel starvation, illness and early death than let them be exploited by eeeeevil corporations?

I don't think I said that.

> As for the "keep the third world under our heel and beholden to us", a lot of us aren't that Manichean and therefore your position falls flat.

A lot of us are exactly that Manichean and that's something to be genuinely worried about. Not everybody has mankinds welfare at heart. Monsanto strikes me as a mixed blessing in that respect, they may do accidental good but in the meantime their goal seems to be to gain control of the worlds staple food supplies.

Well, they're doing a poor job of it, the patent on the GMO part of Roundup Ready soybeans has expired or will expire this year in the US. Others will obviously follow.

Note that there's a separate patent system for old fashioned plant breeding with a longer 25 year term that will cover a variety of these germ lines if you copy the relevant traits vs. just the Roundup hack: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_breeders%27_rights

And I submit you are saying we shouldn't benefit from these inventions. Since you differ, what is the regime you envision in which they get developed and propagated? No points for saying non-profits or the government, the profit motive clearly played a role here (although not in a lot of the Green Revolution developments).

>But that has very little bearing on this, I simply think that there is something inherently wrong about copyright and/or patents on genetic sequences and/or organisms.

Do you feel differently about software copyright, or book copyright?

> Do you feel differently about software copyright, or book copyright?

You write a book you own the rights, no contest. But if you take somebody else's book of 5000 pages, and change six paragraphs you should not own the rights to the resulting derived work.

The code you write is a tiny fragment of the rest that it links with - the OS, the language runtime, the frameworks, PaaS. By your own logic, the code you write should not be copyrightable because it's tiny compared to the whole package received by users. How are you going to make a living then, and who is going to write your software if you can't get paid for doing it?

How do you expect large projects to be accomplished, if not by a series of small self-funded steps? If small steps remain unprotected, the only innovation will be in the hands of giant corporations that can afford to build entire stack (e.g. Sun, Oracle, Microsoft, Amazon)...

> The code you write is a tiny fragment of the rest that it links with - the OS, the language runtime, the frameworks, PaaS.

Sure. And you have a choice for any of those components.

> f small steps remain unprotected, the only innovation will be in the hands of giant corporations that can afford to build entire stack (e.g. Sun, Oracle, Microsoft, Amazon)...

Let's see: Sun: bust, Oracle: Not exactly a paragon of virtue, Microsoft: convicted in court of all kinds of misdeeds, Amazon: built to a large extent on top of open source technologies that were built by people that just advanced the world of technology on their own dime.

Large projects can be accomplished outside of the world that you sketch.

Nature should be treated as GPLv3 or greater. Things like suicide or sterile seeds are DRM.

Congratulations! You've just wiped out a very large fraction of the world's maize production: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_seed and probably some other significant crops. Millions are starving, many more rarely can include meat in their diet.

Let me Godwin this discussion by pointing out the lack of information you have about the subject is an example of why command economies preform so poorly. There's just too much information needed to make intelligent decisions. And then we get things like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism because the process is done by people good at politics, and without skin in the game.

Farmers have skin in the game. Maybe we should accord their decisions some respect???

Relaxed IP requirements helped software and hardware develop reasonably fast. Imagine if the big corps like AT&T or IBM had the foresight to patent vital early algorithmic research. Or how hardware may have developed if AMD's early reverse-engineering of Intel chips was deemed illegal.

Now biotech is still in infancy as far as genetic engineering. Giving a few corporations the right to 'homestead' nature's IP is going to impede startups or small actors to develop the field. It would also prevent development of tech that involves many inter-related concepts, which could be found in different companies' IP pools. That's besides biotech IP trolls or internecine corp trade wars.

So we're not talking about farmers, but the ability of this field to develop quickly like technology did in the last few decades. The technological barriers to entry are falling but in their place IP barriers are erected.

Or how hardware may have developed if AMD's early reverse-engineering of Intel chips was deemed illegal.

Terrible example, because AMD's right to do that came from their contract with Intel to second source the 8086/8 and 286: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_source#Examples

Biotech is extremely rich with small companies, startups, etc., and absent your being able to point out current serious problems, your supposition that the situation might be even better if those small companies were denied IP rights to their developments is at best entirely unfounded.

I'm like Richard Stallman is for FOSS on this: One case of "sue for cross-pollination" is too much. Our food supply and the freedom of people to survive and save food stores is too important to let Monsanto and others fuck with the food chain. Food is not a place for a EULA.

And if you're some sort of liberal hippy who wants to save the entire world, then perhaps the government should buy out these things to ensure it's a public good rather than a Q3 profit driver.

Yeah ... I love having the food security of my nation depending on a lawsuit and binding arbitrage against a corporation that has bigger GDP than that of my country.

And lets not get into first sale doctrine, resale and seeds bought in good faith.

Well ... do viruses have copyright? Because they are the only self replicating software I can think of. Can you link to some legal cases?

I had the chance to dive into this issue a few years ago for a school project, and I was shocked by two things: one, the restraint that Monsanto showed when seeking and litigating protections for their products, and two, the aggressive exaggerations and deceptive wording that environmental groups employed to attack Monsanto.

Case #1: "Monsanto seeds/pollen from the neighboring farm blew into my farm and Monsanto sued me!" is the line that gets brandied about with regularity by environmental groups. Percy Schmeiser, the farmer in question, used it to launch a political career. It's also a highly selective retelling of the story that completely omits the __only__ part of the story that the courts objected to: upon learning that certain plants on his property contained the Monsanto roundup resistance gene, Schmeiser purposefully cultivated large quantities of these plants and deliberately took advantage of Monsanto's specific addition for commercial gain.

The courts were very clear: cultivating the Monsanto Canola without a license was OK, but deliberately taking advantage of roundup resistance without a license was not. How do we know it was deliberate? Because non-Monsanto canola dies when you spray roundup on it. If Percy Schmeiser wasn't aware that he was "pirating" Monsanto crops, spraying his field with roundup would have killed his crop.

Analogy: My neighbor downloaded Adobe Illustrator over unsecured wifi and I captured their serial number with a sniffer. Now Adobe is suing me because I used that serial number to register 100 new copies of Illustrator at the graphic design business I own. I claim (and the media reports) that I'm being sued because a serial-number laden wifi signal intruded on my property. After all, it could happen to you too!

Case #2: Terminator genes. The way the media / environmental groups reported it: "Monsanto has patented genes which will prevent farmers from re-planting seeds if they can't pay Monsanto's fees! Monsanto's greed will cause poor people to starve!" The way Monsanto reported it: "Monsanto commits to never using terminator genes; we patented them so that we are never forced to use them in order to compete against someone who does." Monsanto has kept to their word. Come on, guys -- it seems a bit thankless to reward Monsanto for good behavior by lying and making it look like bad behavior.

Case #3: Seralini's "GMOs cause cancer in rats" study. When we discussed it (the school project was a team project), we agreed that it had some seriously shoddy methodology (if you're teaching about PCA abuse, this paper is a good example). It was retracted shortly thereafter, naturally to cries of "conspiracy!" from environmental groups (and sighs of relief from us). Incidentally, a study reaching the opposite conclusion was recently released using a somewhat larger sample size (N=90,000,000,000 vs N=20).

EDIT: clarified the Percy Schmeiser narrative to make it clearer that he knew exactly what he was doing (as was established in court).

> upon identifying certain plants on his property as roundup-resistant, Schmeiser purposefully cultivated large quantities of roundup-resistant plants and took advantage of their roundup-resistance for commercial gain.

If GMO seeds are superior in significant ways - higher yield, drought resistance, etc. - that's going to happen (albeit somewhat more gradually) even without deliberate action on the farmer's part.

Add in the fact that this only happened because his property got contaminated with stuff that prevents him from selling his product in some marketplaces and I'm surprised you've got so much sympathy for Monsanto here.

You're right, I omitted the word "deliberate." The courts were more careful: it was the fact that P.S. deliberately took advantage of Monsanto's particular genetic addition that got him in trouble.

My "sympathy" for Monsanto derives from sympathy for the environment: genetic modification is a technology with serious power to change the world for the better and I think it's a shame that people feel obliged to invent fictitious narratives in order to damn their use. I also think it's a shame that the GMO market is a monopoly, but that just reduces back to the age-old problem of "how do we incentivize the production of non-excludable goods in a capitalist society" which is a hard problem.

Monopolies are bad, but refusing to take advantage of genetic technology out of spite is worse.

> You're right, I omitted the word "deliberate." The courts were more careful: it was the fact that P.S. deliberately took advantage of Monsanto's particular genetic addition that got him in trouble.

And? He should have what, picked the sicklier plants to propagate?

That strong a selection pressure means dead plants, not "sicklier".

Say, accidentally acquired Photoshop worked out better than GIMP for you. You should have what, picked the worse software for the job?

If you support software copyright, you have to support artificial gene copyright as well.

These are mashups, actually, and because the creative content is limited patent protection is the game. From Wikipedia on the first of these:

Roundup Ready Soybeans express a version of EPSPS from the CP4 strain of the bacteria, Agrobacterium tumefaciens, expression of which is regulated by an enhanced 35S promoter (E35S) from cauliflower mosaic virus (CaMV), a chloroplast transit peptide (CTP4) coding sequence from Petunia hybrida, and a nopaline synthase (nos 3') transcriptional termination element from Agrobacterium tumefaciens. The plasmid with EPSPS and the other genetic elements mentioned above was inserted into soybean germplasm with a gene gun by scientists at Monsanto and Asgrow.

That's some seriously clever genetic engineering ... too bad the patent ran out last year ^_^ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetically_modified_soybean#R...).

Then again those eeeevil corporate mad scientists coming up with new useful additions to soybeans, the monsters. Bt added by Monsanto. DuPount tweaked the output of the three major fats so the one that goes rancid first has a low proportion. Note that bit about Brazil; I've read they've become a major soybean producer thanks to eeeevil 1st World developed seeds that allow it to grow in harsher, dryer climates.

There's been a lot of that. My father mentioned, in the context of a bit of a local drought right here in SW Missouri, USA this year, that even with that maize yields are much higher than they used to be in the best of years.

(OK, you know what's evil: burning food for fuel.)

If Adobe hacks in and replaces GIMP on my computer, I'm going to go ahead and use it.

> It's also a highly selective retelling of the story that completely omits the __only__ part of the story that the courts objected to: upon identifying certain plants on his property as roundup-resistant, Schmeiser purposefully cultivated large quantities of roundup-resistant plants and took advantage of their roundup-resistance for commercial gain.

Farmers have been doing this for thousands of years. That's the reason we have these extremely efficient crops to begin with.

Your typical apple, orange, lemon, grains, rice, potato, soy bean and so on as found 'wild' bear little to no resemblance to what we use as crops. Your looking at an end-product of a lot of hard work.

Farmers have been in the food improvement business since just about forever.

What should bother you is that there even is such a thing as IP rights over organisms.

It's not as if Monsanto created that organism.

If you're going for analogies: Monsanto has taken a public domain item (say a fairy tale) and has added some minor changes to that (see: Disney and the Grimm brothers tales, which in turn were recorded in Germany from old ladies) and has proceeded to restrict the further reproduction of the derived work.

Keep in mind that every living organism tends to reproduce all by itself and that we're merely helping things along a bit.

I'm not happy about the whole patents and genes situation, misinformation from either side of the divide does not help at all, I think Monsanto is excellent at lobbying and finding ways to gain a competitive edge and getting people to use their products (see: Posilac: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-smith/monsanto-forced-...) and I think that they have totally blown their chance to portray GMO in a positive light by their attitude.

The C4 Rice project may be able to restore the balance, let's hope that the way Monsanto has been positioning itself and GMO will not hurt their prospects.

> If you're going for analogies: Monsanto has taken a public domain item (say a fairy tale) and has added some minor changes to that (see: Disney and the Grimm brothers tales, which in turn were recorded in Germany from old ladies) and has proceeded to restrict the further reproduction of the derived work.

All Monsanto is doing is restricting reproduction of the unique, not naturally occurring, spin that it put on the organisms. It's not trying to restrict people from "telling the original fairy tales." It's like Disney asserting copyright over Frozen, which is based on a Hans Christian Anderson story.

Monsanto spends $1.5 billion a year on seed R&D, and its inventions yield many times that value in increased agricultural productivity. Unlike many sectors of the economy, the value proposition of Monsanto's work is unassailable.

> All Monsanto is doing is restricting reproduction of the unique, not naturally occurring, spin that it put on the organisms.

Not even that. They're restricting the use of their unique spin for commercial purposes. You are allowed to commercially grow Monsanto Canola without a license so long as you don't use roundup spray on it (thereby taking advantage of Monsanto's addition).

> All Monsanto is doing is restricting reproduction of the unique, not naturally occurring, spin that it put on the organisms.

You can't really restrict organisms from reproducing, they do that all by themselves anyway.

That's a nice philosophical point, but as a practical matter, reproduction in a modern agricultural context is a tightly controlled and totally human-guided process.

Umm, yes you can. That's what terminator genes are. Monsanto has a patent on them but doesn't use the tech for ethical/PR reasons.

This bit of exaggerated pedantry has convinced me that you're not arguing in good faith.

> Farmers have been doing this for thousands of years.

If Schmeiser had done "what farmers have been doing for thousands of years" and had selectively bred a roundup-resistant plant without using Monsanto's addition (farmers thousands of years ago didn't have Monsanto plants to breed, did they?) then the courts would have found no issue with it.

> IP rights over organisms

Monsanto didn't claim IP rights over the organism, they claimed IP rights over their addition to the organism. If Schmeiser had grown "pirated" Monsanto canola without taking advantage of Monsanto's roundup-resistant gene, he would not have been in any trouble with the law whatsoever.

Calling Monsanto's patent "IP rights over organisms" is like calling Adobe's rights over Illustrator "IP rights over computers." It makes a sensible patent on a particular piece of the whole look like a nonsensical patent on the whole.

> misinformation from either side of the divide does not help at all

Right back at you.

You realize that it's illegal to copy Disney movies even though they were based on Grimm fairy tails, right? Most people seem to agree that this state of affairs promotes the production of further artwork, as do I. Ditto for the Monsanto case.

> I think that they have totally blown their chance to portray GMO in a positive light by their attitude

To me it looks like they are being minimally restrictive subject to the constraint that they are allowed to charge for their product. What "attitude" change would you suggest?

Food is not a disney movie, it is a necessity of life. The power to control what can and can't be planted is the power of life and death.

In many countries utility companies cannot turn off the water if a property is occupied, regardless of whether the occupant pays or not. The profitability of the utility companies isn't relevant.

If Monsanto needs money then they can receive it from sources other than poor Ghanaian farmers.

Then don't use the Monsanto plants?

I really don't get people's inflated sense of entitlement. It's like, I have these perfectly fine plants over here.

But wait, those Monsanto guys in labcoats have plants that produce 1000x more. I could make more money using their plants.

You know what, I'll steal their seeds, grow them, and when they come over and say, hey, that's not fair, you need to pay us for our research, I'll cry, BUT FOOD SHOULD BE FREE!

The "poor Ghanian farmers" you refer to (which is a pretty pathetic attempt to tug at heartstrings) should be perfectly fine to use the same seeds they've been using for thousands of years.

And your water analogy is...just wrong. I'm sorry, if I refuse to pay my water bill, I assure you, the utility company will chase me up. It's not a God-given right to freeload.

In my personal context, water comes as part of the apartment's strata, so we don't pay per use - but the same thing applies to other utility services, like gas and electricity - my provider will chase me up (and has, when I've been careless or absent-minded) if I don't pay my bill.

>> misinformation from either side of the divide does not help at all

> Right back at you.

Ah, you took that to be aimed specifically at you, sorry that wasn't the intention. But it is telling.

Technically all things have APIs, but some need API keys. http://i.imgur.com/wtCYWyE.jpg

Could someone please tell me why intellectual property protection should even be a thing?

So people can make money with their minds, instead of just their hands?

Patents, in fields where they make sense (not software, at least not without 1000x better patent offices) are also useful because they require disclosure up front, allowing immediate cross-fertilization, so to speak ^_^ (very important in Silicon Valley's meteoric development of ICs), and a limited life time. Without them, entities resort to trade secrets, which makes everyone indefinitely impoverished, ADDED: including the trade secret holder, because of that lack of cross-fertilization.

Note the people once asked this question about land. For farms, in fact....

Why would any commercial entity invest in things like drug development, crop development, etc; if the moment they actually bring something to market it's trivially copied and sold at cost?

I'm not sure why I'm getting downvoted; it's an honest quesiton. Why does a business have to base its profits around a particular implementation of a thing?

Errr, "a particular implementation of a thing" cannot be patented. It might be copyrightable (in the US, things with no creative content like a telephone book cannot be protected by copyright).

GMOs are much more like inventions protectable by patents than creative works, like, say, an artificial form of life based on silicon. Not entirely different in principle than building a machine out of different mostly pre-fab parts, the combination of which is an invention.

> Why does a business have to base its profits around a particular implementation of a thing?

That has nothing to do with it. It's a question of incentives. Patent supporters believe that a limited monopoly encourages innovation. That's it.

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