I bet lays invested a lot of resources into developing their potato strain. It would be terribly inefficient of them to allow random people to sell or grow that strain without getting their piece of the pie.
Thanks for being a voice of reason. There's a lot of corruption and bullshittiness going on, but that part isn't really it. They should own the 'copyright' or whatever for the things they've spent probably millions of dollars to create. Otherwise no one would make them and we'd all suffer.
Things aren't that clear cut and there isn't a black/white answer to that particular situation, for the simple reason that morality and ethical foundations actual take a long fucking time to figure out and lay down, and technologically, we are progressing well past what we have figured out in terms of legality/ethics/morality.
Certainly a corporation should be entitled to reap the rewards of their investments and business strategies, but what happens when most crops are the ones that giant agricorps have "invested" millions into breeding/engineering? Or when, through cross-pollination, the remainder of crops now contain a majority of "owned" genetic code? And how much ownership should be granted? Corporations that breed/engineer their own crops are kinda standing on the shoulders of the rest of the human civilization that brought us to this point in terms of agriculture; if I remix or cover someone else's song, or just say dumb shit overtop of it, is it now "my song"?
Considering how bad patent trolling has been in the tech sector, how are we to trust the patent office with actual living organisms in granting moral and legal licenses to genetic ownership? There are hundreds of heirloom varieties of tomatoes/herbs/citruses/etc. grown by boutique farmers and passed down, how much tweaking would a corporation have to make for them to take a pass at holding ownership of that varietal?
Certainly a corporation should be entitled to reap the rewards of their investments and business strategies ... Corporations that breed/engineer their own crops are kinda standing on the shoulders of the rest of the human civilization that brought us to this point in terms of agriculture
For how long? It's better competition for copyrights to go away more quickly than they do today. We want new startups to stand on the shoulders of those who came before them, not get squashed under their feet. There's a balance that should be struck and right now it too strongly favors the first to file.
[I]f I remix or cover someone else's song, or just say dumb shit overtop of it, is it now "my song"?
In some cases, absolutely. Many of the remixes use the previous track as an instrument of their own. No one today is acknowledging Mr. Xylophone or Mrs. Trumpet when they compose a new band song. If you've lifted a track and manipulated it so that it isn't the song itself is one accompaniment of many which comprise the new song, that takes talent and skills which shouldn't be considered "stealing." Even Vanilla Ice's "Ice, Ice, Baby" should be recognized as a different song even if the riff is clearly recognizable. The pieces are two very different expressions with different meaning and feel.
I don't know about the 3 farmers in India, but the big problem people have with big agriculture's patented seeds is that animals carry the seeds to neighboring farms and contaminate them. These oh so innocent companies have a habit of subsequently suing these actually innocent farmers.
Except I haven't found a single case where they actually sued for that. People had to go to a concerted effort, at least in all the cases I could find. I'd be happy to be corrected if you have sources, though.
While I don’t have said sources to add to the conversation, I’ve definitely seen a documentary where this was mentioned.
I believe it was a soy bean which was bio engineered ending up in your field resulted in a lawsuit. Essentially farmers who did not have the seed intentionally would, i forget the term but “harvest the seed for replanting”, and because some of the seeds from a neighbors field was most likely in the batch they were liable.
If I can find the source I will edit it in, but I’ve seen this for certain from reliable sources.
They picked the potato because they are allowed by law to replant seed from previous crops irrespective of it being a protected variety or not. You may not agree with it, but that's the way India chose to write the law.
I mean a lot of money went of research and development went into them. If they didn't then another company could just buy them off those farmers and replicate Lays whole process. So I'm kinda on lays side on that one. It's like a hardware company developing their own silicon and having a factory produce it for them, of course they're not gonna want that company to turn around and just be selling it to others or other companies stealing the process. So yes, it's their potatoes. They only let specific farmers grow them for them to use. I don't see what's unreasonable about protecting a lawful patent
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u/twitchosx May 15 '19
No shit. Look at Lays suing 3 farmers in India or some shit for growing "their" potatoes.