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Previous discussion on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5378008 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5378008 from kevinpet: "The Monsanto patents are f

Previous discussion on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5378008 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5378008 from kevinpet: "The Monsanto patents are for the method of using a particular herbicide in combination with the modified plant seeds.... Has Monsanto ever sued anyone who was not trying to use the combination of the GMO crops and the herbicide they are tolerant to?" from tptacek: "the behavior Monsanto pursues is planting unlicensed Roundup-Ready seeds and then spraying them with glyphosphate-based ("Roundup") herbicides. You can spray Roundup without a patent license. You can probably plant RR crops without a license. But if you do both (commercially, at least), Monsanto sues. The point of RR seeds is that they resist Roundup, which is a broad-spectrum herbicide that will kill non-RR crops. In the commercial suits, it becomes tricky to argue that you planted RR crops unwittingly when you are later shown to have sprayed them with an herbicide that would have certainly ruined your harvest but for inbred RR resistance." There are a lot of actions that, if we described the component behaviors, would sound legitimate -- but taken in aggregate are clearly wrong. It's legal to be in the forest and it's legal to discharge a firearm, but it becomes illegal if you knowingly target a person in the forest with that firearm. It's legal to change your clothes and wear a fake beard, and normally legal to go into a grocery store, but it becomes illegal if you disguise yourself to circumvent a store ban. And it's legal to have RR seeds in your field and it's legal to spray roundup, but it becomes illegal if you intentionally try to circumvent Monsanto's patents by using roundup to isolate their seeds and then intentionally replant those so that you'll be able to use roundup on your crops without destroying your crops and without paying the standard fee.

thaumasiotes 12y ago
> It's legal to be in the forest and it's legal to discharge a firearm, but it becomes illegal if you knowingly target a person in the forest with that firearm. This isn't a good example; it's not legal to hit the other person whether you're in the forest or not. If you mean targeting but missing, that's also illegal no matter where you are, but hard to punish without good evidence of malice (again, no matter where you are). There's an element of the offense which is (a) clearly not included under "be in the forest" or "discharge a firearm" (for example, if I was Superman and I just threw a bullet into someone at speed, that would be just as illegal as using a gun to do it), and (b) definitely illegal no matter the context. > It's legal to change your clothes and wear a fake beard, and normally legal to go into a grocery store, but it becomes illegal if you disguise yourself to circumvent a store ban. I don't really object to this example, though if the law is as described I object to that. What recourse does the store have? Is disguising yourself actually part of the offense, or is the offense purely that you entered the store?
- lotharbot 12y ago
  disguising yourself in order to attempt to circumvent the ban would be an additional offense. Though the point is less the examples and more the principle: that an offense can be made up of multiple inoffensive-sounding parts which are only problematic when taken together.
  - thaumasiotes 12y ago
    But if there are no examples of the principle, the principle would seem to be questionable. Disguising yourself being an additional, quasi-separate offense puts it into the pattern of hate crimes, where a legal action harshens the penalty for an illegal one. But it doesn't illustrate the idea that an offense can be composed solely of actions which are all individually OK; if you're banned from a store you commit an offense by entering it, and entering in disguise necessarily involves entering. It's probably worth mentioning blackmail, which is a standard example of a crime made up solely of legal acts. But that very property of blackmail has meant that judges (and some legal theoreticians) hate it and try not to extend what sorts of conduct might be considered blackmail or draw analogies to blackmail when considering other crimes.
    - lotharbot 12y ago
      > "if there are no examples of the principle" it's a big stretch from "I didn't happen to describe any perfectly" to "there aren't any". > "an offense can be composed solely of actions which are all individually OK" An offense can be composed of actions which all sound like they're OK when described without the context of the other actions. (See, for example, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6235034 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6235034 -- changing IPs is OK and accessing a website is OK, but when you've received a C&D letter and you circumvent an IP ban, that's lawsuit-worthy.) Going back to the Monsanto case, it sounds like it's OK to grow the seeds you happen to have, and it sounds like it's OK to spray your crops with roundup, and it sounds like it's OK to replant seeds that survive. But the combination, clearly intended to acquire a RR crop (and use roundup on it) without paying the appropriate fee, is illegal.

thaumasiotes 12y ago

> It's legal to be in the forest and it's legal to discharge a firearm, but it becomes illegal if you knowingly target a person in the forest with that firearm. This isn't a good example; it's not legal to hit the other person whether you're in the forest or not. If you mean targeting but missing, that's also illegal no matter where you are, but hard to punish without good evidence of malice (again, no matter where you are). There's an element of the offense which is (a) clearly not included under "be in the forest" or "discharge a firearm" (for example, if I was Superman and I just threw a bullet into someone at speed, that would be just as illegal as using a gun to do it), and (b) definitely illegal no matter the context. > It's legal to change your clothes and wear a fake beard, and normally legal to go into a grocery store, but it becomes illegal if you disguise yourself to circumvent a store ban. I don't really object to this example, though if the law is as described I object to that. What recourse does the store have? Is disguising yourself actually part of the offense, or is the offense purely that you entered the store?

lotharbot 12y ago
disguising yourself in order to attempt to circumvent the ban would be an additional offense. Though the point is less the examples and more the principle: that an offense can be made up of multiple inoffensive-sounding parts which are only problematic when taken together.
- thaumasiotes 12y ago
  But if there are no examples of the principle, the principle would seem to be questionable. Disguising yourself being an additional, quasi-separate offense puts it into the pattern of hate crimes, where a legal action harshens the penalty for an illegal one. But it doesn't illustrate the idea that an offense can be composed solely of actions which are all individually OK; if you're banned from a store you commit an offense by entering it, and entering in disguise necessarily involves entering. It's probably worth mentioning blackmail, which is a standard example of a crime made up solely of legal acts. But that very property of blackmail has meant that judges (and some legal theoreticians) hate it and try not to extend what sorts of conduct might be considered blackmail or draw analogies to blackmail when considering other crimes.
  - lotharbot 12y ago
    > "if there are no examples of the principle" it's a big stretch from "I didn't happen to describe any perfectly" to "there aren't any". > "an offense can be composed solely of actions which are all individually OK" An offense can be composed of actions which all sound like they're OK when described without the context of the other actions. (See, for example, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6235034 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6235034 -- changing IPs is OK and accessing a website is OK, but when you've received a C&D letter and you circumvent an IP ban, that's lawsuit-worthy.) Going back to the Monsanto case, it sounds like it's OK to grow the seeds you happen to have, and it sounds like it's OK to spray your crops with roundup, and it sounds like it's OK to replant seeds that survive. But the combination, clearly intended to acquire a RR crop (and use roundup on it) without paying the appropriate fee, is illegal.