> 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.
> 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.
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.
These things are perfectly reasonable in the world of regular copyright. If you take a photo, and accidentally catch a copyrighted content in the frame, it’s perfectly fine, but if you deliberately crop the copyrighted content from your photo, and reproduce it for financial gain, that’s illegal.
That's a bad analogy. Photographs don't reproduce with each other. Trying to force the notion of "copyright" on nature is an absurdist take that needs to be rejected with prejudice.
If Monsanto's little wet dream does come to pass, I imagine you'll defend things like "Sorry, but Monsanto says you haven't paid your kidney licensing fees, we're going to have to take that transplant back" or "Looks here like you owe us money because one of your ancestors bought some genes from us".
You'll probably say that can't happen for some reason or another, but unless we push back forcefully now, it will. Once you've thrown reason in the trash, all that's left is greed.
> That's a bad analogy. Photographs don't reproduce with each other.
So what? How is this relevant? The crucial aspect is captured by the analogy: accidental copyright infringement is by and large not possible to prosecute, but deliberate infringement by pretending an accident is. Nobody lost a lawsuit to Monsanto just because their crops accidentally shared some genes with Monsanto plants.
> If Monsanto's little wet dream does come to pass, I imagine you'll defend things like
Are you able to maintain some minimal standards of politeness and charity in public discussions? First “spouting nonsense syllables that resemble speech”, now you’re creating a blatant straw man. Is this how you normally talk to people? Maybe I should pick a random organization that I’ll impute you are a fan of, invent some atrocious “wet dream” of it, and pretend that you defend that atrocity. How about that?
I'll be as clear as I can: natural processes such as reproduction of a species inherently cannot be "infringing" because applying copyright to nature is absurd. This is entirely unlike photographs, and I'm not sure how that was relevant to bring up.
> Maybe I should pick a random organization that I’ll impute you are a fan of
If you are "a fan of" any organization such as Monsanto, you should reconsider that choice. Monsanto won't love you back.
EDIT: I'm not really sure why you brought up being a fan of anything, not clear how that was relevant in the first place ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
If you listen to the anti-GMO, anti-Monsanto people long enough, you realize they're arguing in total bad faith, with talking points that make no sense. There's some sort of irrational undercurrent driving it.
I didn't say anything about GMOs. They've done some nice things for humanity. When it's done with the goal of trying to "own" nature via imaginary concepts such as copyright, that is an odious act that must be called out and resisted.
I'm also not inherently anti-Monsanto. You're the one that brought up a scenario where they were acting like cartoon villians. Maybe that should make you pause and think. If you're involved with Monsanto in some way, perhaps you could take some initiative to discourage them from acts of cartoon villiany?
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...