6 ms·

This just follows the same trend of patenting crops and animal's DNA. These are all effects of overreaching IP laws creating inescapably profitable business mod

This just follows the same trend of patenting crops and animal's DNA. These are all effects of overreaching IP laws creating inescapably profitable business models out of thin air rather than necessity. Software is only eating the world because we let it. When they're done eating what makes our lunch and lunch box money, then the robot tractors will turn to eat us.

xyzzyz 4y ago
Do you prefer that the companies patenting the DNA never developed the organisms in the first place, and that the farmers are left without the option of using them? Or do you have some alternative in mind to incentivize the development of better breeds and variants other than patenting? How else are the companies supposed to capture the fruits of their development?
- thr0wawayf00 4y ago
  > Or do you have some alternative in mind to incentivize the development of better breeds and variants other than patenting? What makes you think the breeds they're developing are "better"? Monsanto famously developed "terminator seeds" that were only stopped from distribution under intense pressure from the community since they posed a major risk to the food supply[0]. The seeds were genetically designed to die after one harvest and Monsanto couldn't guarantee that the terminator variants wouldn't cross-pollinate with legacy varieties and inherit the same trait. That is pure greed. Not improvement, not innovation. Pure, unadulterated greed. We have to move past the argument that all businesses are truly innovating all the time. The only thing constantly being innovated is their ability to make money. Take everything else with a grain of salt. 0: https://cases.open.ubc.ca/monsanto-and-terminator-seeds/ https://cases.open.ubc.ca/monsanto-and-terminator-seeds/
  - pfdietz 4y ago
    If they aren't better, why would a farmer care if they're for sale? They could just use the older varieties and not suffer any penalty. No, the whining about patented plants is because they would be superior, and farmers who spurned them would be at a competitive disadvantage. You can't have it both ways. Oh, and why are terminator seeds (which Monsanto never sold) any worse than hybrid seeds, which don't breed true and effectively can't be replanted?
    - thr0wawayf00 4y ago
      > If they aren't better, why would a farmer care if they're for sale? They could just use the older varieties and not suffer any penalty. Many farmers use Monsanto out of fear for being sued. Monsanto has license agreements in place that permit them to sue farmers that use their seeds without permission. This means that if your neighboring farmer uses Monsanto seeds and some of the seeds blow onto your land and cross-pollinate, you're now violating Monsanto's patents. They've sued farmers for millions over this[0]. > Oh, and why are terminator seeds (which Monsanto never sold) any worse than hybrid seeds, which don't breed true and effectively can't be replanted? Like I said, Monsanto couldn't prove that terminator seeds wouldn't cross-pollinate with other varieties, which could've triggered a mass-starvation event unlike anything we've ever seen. It's crazy to see people defending this kind of behavior. 0: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/feb/12/monsanto-sues-farmers-seed-patents https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/feb/12/monsanto...
      - pfdietz 4y ago
        > Many farmers use Monsanto out of fear for being sued. If you buy seed from another supplier, Monsanto would sue you? It's incredible you could make this statement without realizing how completely and obviously absurd it is. If this scenario were real, other seed producers could have demolished Monsanto with restraint of trade lawsuits, and would have. And no, Monsanto never sued a single farmer due to inadvertent contamination from GMO pollen. They stated they never would, and it's very likely that even if they had tried, it would not have worked (since the farmer is not responsible for the contamination.) They DID sue a farmer who deliberately sprayed a field that had been contaminated, to kill off the crops without the trait, and repeated this until he had selected for and concentrated the resistance trait. THAT act, spraying and collecting, showed malicious intent and violated the patent. It's not something an honest farmer would have to worry about. If terminator seeds (which Monsanto never sold) caused traces of cross pollination, why would that be a problem? The trait would rapidly select itself out of a population.
        gaganyaan 4y ago
        Your defense does not come across how you think it does, particularly because it's inherently absurd and devoid of reason. "You there! Crop! Stop sharing genes! Stop adapting to your environment! This piece of paper says you can't!" The idea that you can loose a reproducing organism on the world and then sue people when that organism does what reproducing organisms do is just... stop and listen to yourself. You're spouting nonsense syllables that resemble speech.
  - colinmhayes 4y ago
    The fact that farmers use them makes me think they're better. Farmers can buy "generic" non-gmo seeds that cost practically nothing. They choose not to, presumably because they believe they won't make as much money.
    - mhuffman 4y ago
      >They choose not to, presumably because they believe they won't make as much money. They choose not to because Monsanto famously sues the hell out of farmers who have patented seeds in up in their farms.
      - colinmhayes 4y ago
        Which cases involve Monsanto suing a farmer who didn't bring the patented seeds into their land on purpose? Every single case I know of is against a farmer who knowingly planted patented seeds.
  - snovv_crash 4y ago
    Terminator seeds were developed specifically to prevent GMOs from 'contaminating' heritage crops, a case that environmentalists care deeply about. There are plenty of other reasons to criticize the commercial seed industry but this isn't one of them.
- wbsss4412 4y ago
  You set this up as an either/or as though we had no system of crop development in place before patents. Though this may accelerate development, the real question is whether the cost is worth it.
- AlexandrB 4y ago
  > Or do you have some alternative in mind to incentivize the development of better breeds and variants other than patenting? How else are the companies supposed to capture the fruits of their development? I don't get it. Humans have selectively bred better plants for millenia before the era of modern IP. A process that's far more time consuming than CRISPR. Yet now, there's suddenly no incentive to improve plants unless a corporation can own the results outright for 20 years? This is ideology, not economics. There are plenty of institutions that would work on improving crops even if Monsanto & co. got out of the game. Universities come to mind here. And the results of their work could actually help farmers that can't afford IP-encumbered crops, not just large, wealthy farmers.
  - xyzzyz 4y ago
    > A process that's far more time consuming than CRISPR. Yet now, there's suddenly no incentive to improve plants unless a corporation can own the results outright for 20 years? If you are fine with the process being much slower than now, why do you care about 20 years of patent protection? If you’re willing to wait centuries for improvements the modern corporations achieve in years, why not just consider the patent protection period to be extra part of the process? It’s still faster than the millennia you talk about, no?
- JohnFen 4y ago
  > Do you prefer that the companies patenting the DNA never developed the organisms in the first place, and that the farmers are left without the option of using them? If that's actually the alternative (and I don't think it is), then yes. Patenting DNA should not be allowed.
  - xyzzyz 4y ago
    But why? You’re proposing something with clear negative consequences. Do you have some reason? Are there some benefits of blocking parenting organisms?
WHATDOESIT 4y ago
So what's stopping people from making an open-source open-hardware tractor? There's stuff like Open Source Ecology which is very cool but nowhere near what John Deere offers. It's just hard to make stuff on their level and engineers want to be paid big bucks and not work too much. How do you ensure you have enough for their wages with your open-source open-hardware tractor company?
- speed_spread 4y ago
  I believe that the culture is just not there, generally. The industry is thinking in short-term ROI and "cost of doing business" ways but are actually locking themselves in which will have immense long-term social (externalized) costs. We hear a lot about GMO's health and environmental concerns but the real issue IMO is the captive business model these proprietary technologies imply. This will take decades to change. In the current conditions, I agree that an open-source supplier is a though proposition. "The invisible hand" is working on a time scale too short to allow self-regulation, thus the playing field would have to be leveled politically, maybe by changing the IP laws to benefit the people more. Unfortunately, a nation of vehement lawyers is very unlikely to allow this.
- Aperocky 4y ago
  Just give it time, people used to pay for OS back in the days.
- bombcar 4y ago
  The people who want an open-source open-hardware tractor continue to run their older tractors forever; you can get parts for nearly anything and the oldest tractors can be fixed with a welding torch and a supply of steel. The cross-section of "willing to pay full price for a brand new farm implement" and "cares enough to get a slower/less featureful device for open-source" is very small. If the open tractor was better and cheaper than the Deere, it'd win even without being open, and if it is not then it has a hard row to hoe. Construction equipment went down this path long ago, I've heard that Cat will basically give you machines for free as long as you sign up for the service/maintenance contract ...
xhkkffbf 4y ago
I kind of like all of the computers in my car. The computer control of fuel injection, for instance, has boosted mileage and dramatically reduced pollution. There are dozens of smart chips that are saving lives and cleaning the environment. So, you can demonize it by invoking the patent office or software IP, but if that's part of the trade off, well, I'm generally willing to make it.
- thr0wawayf00 4y ago
  What happens when the automaker updates the software in your car to charge you a monthly fee in order to use those same computerized components? This is already happening, most recently with Toyota putting its remote start feature behind a monthly subscription paywall[0]. Imagine buying a car that had all the features you want, only to get an email 6 months later that you now need to pay a subscription to continue using those very same features. 0: https://www.thedrive.com/news/43329/toyota-made-its-key-fob-remote-start-into-a-subscription-service https://www.thedrive.com/news/43329/toyota-made-its-key-fob-...
  - slt2021 4y ago
    it doesnt work exactly like that. when you buy a car, you can either pay full price for a feature, lets say heated seats for $4000, or you can purchase subscription for $80/mo, or you may opt out of that feature, save money and it will be disabled programmatically in your car. Just as if car was never supplied with heating element for seats. yet your car will still be shipped with heated seats - just because it is cheaper to do that for manufacturing purposes. Cheaper to equip all cars with the standard heated seats, than manufacture two model of seats: with and without heating. plus you can always subscribe for that feature any day post purchase, so there is no downside for manufacturer. you get what you pay for. you can always pay upfront for the feature and will never have to pay subscription
kickout 4y ago
Mmm, I think your wording is clunky. Most of the crops that have patents have the patent on biotech trait. You can take a patent on a newly developed crop variety, just like any other _novel_ invention--plants are no different. Also look up the Plant Variety Protection act (1974?), which also provides IP protection for crops. Without these, it's debatable how much innovation would occur in crops/plants.
- AlexandrB 4y ago
  Plants are different. Unlike most inventions plants will generally replicate themselves given the opportunity. The idea that you can sue for patent infringement when this happens naturally is absurd on its face, yet here we are: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/feb/12/monsanto-sues-farmers-seed-patents https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/feb/12/monsanto...
  - kickout 4y ago
    Nobody is patenting naturally occurring plants to my knowledge. Plant breeders make specific (usually) sexual crosses and sift through the progeny. Since plants have tremendous variation, many of the progeny are different than the parents. This is the basic form of one invention. Also your comment does not make sense. Some plants are can self-pollinate and are sufficiently inbred so that they 'replicate' themselves. Many plants are out-crossers. There also exists apomixis, asexual reproduction etc. Plant are also well suited to clonal propagation. 'Natural' is a completely vague term. Many of of the crops we have bred and that are IP protected (soybeans, corn, wheat, cotton, rice) have effectively 0% chance of occurring 'naturally' in nature because they conditions for their fitness to be high enough likely would never exist.
    - AlexandrB 4y ago
      > Nobody is patenting naturally occurring plants to my knowledge. Plant breeders make specific (usually) sexual crosses and sift through the progeny. Since plants have tremendous variation, many of the progeny are different than the parents. This is the basic form of one invention. I never argued that they were patenting wild plants. But bred plants existed long before they could be patented. Indeed, Monsanto did not start with "wild" strains, but with strains developed over millenia of selective breeding. Plant patents are a form of "enclosure", where a domain that was previously freely available to the public (plant breeding) becomes commercialized and monetized so only a few entities can realistically improve on plant strains without risking a lawsuit. How this benefits innovation in the broad sense is beyond me. But it's certainly good for biotech companies' bottom line.

xyzzyz 4y ago

Do you prefer that the companies patenting the DNA never developed the organisms in the first place, and that the farmers are left without the option of using them? Or do you have some alternative in mind to incentivize the development of better breeds and variants other than patenting? How else are the companies supposed to capture the fruits of their development?

thr0wawayf00 4y ago
> Or do you have some alternative in mind to incentivize the development of better breeds and variants other than patenting? What makes you think the breeds they're developing are "better"? Monsanto famously developed "terminator seeds" that were only stopped from distribution under intense pressure from the community since they posed a major risk to the food supply[0]. The seeds were genetically designed to die after one harvest and Monsanto couldn't guarantee that the terminator variants wouldn't cross-pollinate with legacy varieties and inherit the same trait. That is pure greed. Not improvement, not innovation. Pure, unadulterated greed. We have to move past the argument that all businesses are truly innovating all the time. The only thing constantly being innovated is their ability to make money. Take everything else with a grain of salt. 0: https://cases.open.ubc.ca/monsanto-and-terminator-seeds/ https://cases.open.ubc.ca/monsanto-and-terminator-seeds/
- pfdietz 4y ago
  If they aren't better, why would a farmer care if they're for sale? They could just use the older varieties and not suffer any penalty. No, the whining about patented plants is because they would be superior, and farmers who spurned them would be at a competitive disadvantage. You can't have it both ways. Oh, and why are terminator seeds (which Monsanto never sold) any worse than hybrid seeds, which don't breed true and effectively can't be replanted?
  - thr0wawayf00 4y ago
    > If they aren't better, why would a farmer care if they're for sale? They could just use the older varieties and not suffer any penalty. Many farmers use Monsanto out of fear for being sued. Monsanto has license agreements in place that permit them to sue farmers that use their seeds without permission. This means that if your neighboring farmer uses Monsanto seeds and some of the seeds blow onto your land and cross-pollinate, you're now violating Monsanto's patents. They've sued farmers for millions over this[0]. > Oh, and why are terminator seeds (which Monsanto never sold) any worse than hybrid seeds, which don't breed true and effectively can't be replanted? Like I said, Monsanto couldn't prove that terminator seeds wouldn't cross-pollinate with other varieties, which could've triggered a mass-starvation event unlike anything we've ever seen. It's crazy to see people defending this kind of behavior. 0: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/feb/12/monsanto-sues-farmers-seed-patents https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/feb/12/monsanto...
    - pfdietz 4y ago
      > Many farmers use Monsanto out of fear for being sued. If you buy seed from another supplier, Monsanto would sue you? It's incredible you could make this statement without realizing how completely and obviously absurd it is. If this scenario were real, other seed producers could have demolished Monsanto with restraint of trade lawsuits, and would have. And no, Monsanto never sued a single farmer due to inadvertent contamination from GMO pollen. They stated they never would, and it's very likely that even if they had tried, it would not have worked (since the farmer is not responsible for the contamination.) They DID sue a farmer who deliberately sprayed a field that had been contaminated, to kill off the crops without the trait, and repeated this until he had selected for and concentrated the resistance trait. THAT act, spraying and collecting, showed malicious intent and violated the patent. It's not something an honest farmer would have to worry about. If terminator seeds (which Monsanto never sold) caused traces of cross pollination, why would that be a problem? The trait would rapidly select itself out of a population.
      - gaganyaan 4y ago
        Your defense does not come across how you think it does, particularly because it's inherently absurd and devoid of reason. "You there! Crop! Stop sharing genes! Stop adapting to your environment! This piece of paper says you can't!" The idea that you can loose a reproducing organism on the world and then sue people when that organism does what reproducing organisms do is just... stop and listen to yourself. You're spouting nonsense syllables that resemble speech.
- colinmhayes 4y ago
  The fact that farmers use them makes me think they're better. Farmers can buy "generic" non-gmo seeds that cost practically nothing. They choose not to, presumably because they believe they won't make as much money.
  - mhuffman 4y ago
    >They choose not to, presumably because they believe they won't make as much money. They choose not to because Monsanto famously sues the hell out of farmers who have patented seeds in up in their farms.
    - colinmhayes 4y ago
      Which cases involve Monsanto suing a farmer who didn't bring the patented seeds into their land on purpose? Every single case I know of is against a farmer who knowingly planted patented seeds.
- snovv_crash 4y ago
  Terminator seeds were developed specifically to prevent GMOs from 'contaminating' heritage crops, a case that environmentalists care deeply about. There are plenty of other reasons to criticize the commercial seed industry but this isn't one of them.
wbsss4412 4y ago
You set this up as an either/or as though we had no system of crop development in place before patents. Though this may accelerate development, the real question is whether the cost is worth it.
AlexandrB 4y ago
> Or do you have some alternative in mind to incentivize the development of better breeds and variants other than patenting? How else are the companies supposed to capture the fruits of their development? I don't get it. Humans have selectively bred better plants for millenia before the era of modern IP. A process that's far more time consuming than CRISPR. Yet now, there's suddenly no incentive to improve plants unless a corporation can own the results outright for 20 years? This is ideology, not economics. There are plenty of institutions that would work on improving crops even if Monsanto & co. got out of the game. Universities come to mind here. And the results of their work could actually help farmers that can't afford IP-encumbered crops, not just large, wealthy farmers.
- xyzzyz 4y ago
  > A process that's far more time consuming than CRISPR. Yet now, there's suddenly no incentive to improve plants unless a corporation can own the results outright for 20 years? If you are fine with the process being much slower than now, why do you care about 20 years of patent protection? If you’re willing to wait centuries for improvements the modern corporations achieve in years, why not just consider the patent protection period to be extra part of the process? It’s still faster than the millennia you talk about, no?
JohnFen 4y ago
> Do you prefer that the companies patenting the DNA never developed the organisms in the first place, and that the farmers are left without the option of using them? If that's actually the alternative (and I don't think it is), then yes. Patenting DNA should not be allowed.
- xyzzyz 4y ago
  But why? You’re proposing something with clear negative consequences. Do you have some reason? Are there some benefits of blocking parenting organisms?

WHATDOESIT 4y ago

So what's stopping people from making an open-source open-hardware tractor? There's stuff like Open Source Ecology which is very cool but nowhere near what John Deere offers. It's just hard to make stuff on their level and engineers want to be paid big bucks and not work too much. How do you ensure you have enough for their wages with your open-source open-hardware tractor company?

speed_spread 4y ago
I believe that the culture is just not there, generally. The industry is thinking in short-term ROI and "cost of doing business" ways but are actually locking themselves in which will have immense long-term social (externalized) costs. We hear a lot about GMO's health and environmental concerns but the real issue IMO is the captive business model these proprietary technologies imply. This will take decades to change. In the current conditions, I agree that an open-source supplier is a though proposition. "The invisible hand" is working on a time scale too short to allow self-regulation, thus the playing field would have to be leveled politically, maybe by changing the IP laws to benefit the people more. Unfortunately, a nation of vehement lawyers is very unlikely to allow this.
Aperocky 4y ago
Just give it time, people used to pay for OS back in the days.
bombcar 4y ago
The people who want an open-source open-hardware tractor continue to run their older tractors forever; you can get parts for nearly anything and the oldest tractors can be fixed with a welding torch and a supply of steel. The cross-section of "willing to pay full price for a brand new farm implement" and "cares enough to get a slower/less featureful device for open-source" is very small. If the open tractor was better and cheaper than the Deere, it'd win even without being open, and if it is not then it has a hard row to hoe. Construction equipment went down this path long ago, I've heard that Cat will basically give you machines for free as long as you sign up for the service/maintenance contract ...

xhkkffbf 4y ago

I kind of like all of the computers in my car. The computer control of fuel injection, for instance, has boosted mileage and dramatically reduced pollution. There are dozens of smart chips that are saving lives and cleaning the environment. So, you can demonize it by invoking the patent office or software IP, but if that's part of the trade off, well, I'm generally willing to make it.

thr0wawayf00 4y ago
What happens when the automaker updates the software in your car to charge you a monthly fee in order to use those same computerized components? This is already happening, most recently with Toyota putting its remote start feature behind a monthly subscription paywall[0]. Imagine buying a car that had all the features you want, only to get an email 6 months later that you now need to pay a subscription to continue using those very same features. 0: https://www.thedrive.com/news/43329/toyota-made-its-key-fob-remote-start-into-a-subscription-service https://www.thedrive.com/news/43329/toyota-made-its-key-fob-...
- slt2021 4y ago
  it doesnt work exactly like that. when you buy a car, you can either pay full price for a feature, lets say heated seats for $4000, or you can purchase subscription for $80/mo, or you may opt out of that feature, save money and it will be disabled programmatically in your car. Just as if car was never supplied with heating element for seats. yet your car will still be shipped with heated seats - just because it is cheaper to do that for manufacturing purposes. Cheaper to equip all cars with the standard heated seats, than manufacture two model of seats: with and without heating. plus you can always subscribe for that feature any day post purchase, so there is no downside for manufacturer. you get what you pay for. you can always pay upfront for the feature and will never have to pay subscription

kickout 4y ago

Mmm, I think your wording is clunky. Most of the crops that have patents have the patent on biotech trait. You can take a patent on a newly developed crop variety, just like any other _novel_ invention--plants are no different. Also look up the Plant Variety Protection act (1974?), which also provides IP protection for crops. Without these, it's debatable how much innovation would occur in crops/plants.

AlexandrB 4y ago
Plants are different. Unlike most inventions plants will generally replicate themselves given the opportunity. The idea that you can sue for patent infringement when this happens naturally is absurd on its face, yet here we are: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/feb/12/monsanto-sues-farmers-seed-patents https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/feb/12/monsanto...
- kickout 4y ago
  Nobody is patenting naturally occurring plants to my knowledge. Plant breeders make specific (usually) sexual crosses and sift through the progeny. Since plants have tremendous variation, many of the progeny are different than the parents. This is the basic form of one invention. Also your comment does not make sense. Some plants are can self-pollinate and are sufficiently inbred so that they 'replicate' themselves. Many plants are out-crossers. There also exists apomixis, asexual reproduction etc. Plant are also well suited to clonal propagation. 'Natural' is a completely vague term. Many of of the crops we have bred and that are IP protected (soybeans, corn, wheat, cotton, rice) have effectively 0% chance of occurring 'naturally' in nature because they conditions for their fitness to be high enough likely would never exist.
  - AlexandrB 4y ago
    > Nobody is patenting naturally occurring plants to my knowledge. Plant breeders make specific (usually) sexual crosses and sift through the progeny. Since plants have tremendous variation, many of the progeny are different than the parents. This is the basic form of one invention. I never argued that they were patenting wild plants. But bred plants existed long before they could be patented. Indeed, Monsanto did not start with "wild" strains, but with strains developed over millenia of selective breeding. Plant patents are a form of "enclosure", where a domain that was previously freely available to the public (plant breeding) becomes commercialized and monetized so only a few entities can realistically improve on plant strains without risking a lawsuit. How this benefits innovation in the broad sense is beyond me. But it's certainly good for biotech companies' bottom line.