
Argentine government favors farmers in dispute with Monsanto - wslh
http://en.mercopress.com/2016/04/15/argentine-government-favors-farmers-in-dispute-with-monsanto
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koolba
FYI, this is the same company that sues farmers for re-planting seeds that
blew onto their land:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto_Canada_Inc_v_Schmeise...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto_Canada_Inc_v_Schmeiser)

I don't use the phrase "evil" often to describe corporations but Monsanto
makes the cut.

~~~
technotony
Your allegations miss a crucial detail, Monsanto sued farmers who planted
seeds and then sprayed them with herbicide[1]. Ie the farmer knew what he was
doing and used the patented trait. Why shouldn’t Monsanto sue over that? Like
many things in GMO land the myth that they sue accidental contamination is
wrong.

Monsanto has the worst PR team in history, which has made my company’s work
much harder, but ‘Monsanto is Evil’ is a marketing slogan developed by
Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth etc. These environmental groups are actually
the true evil in the industry. Their campaigning has held back progress in the
industry by many years. Smarter folks than me argue that their actions on
Golden Rice meet all the criteria to be considered a crime against humanity[2]

[1] [http://www.monsanto.com/newsviews/pages/gm-seed-
accidentally...](http://www.monsanto.com/newsviews/pages/gm-seed-accidentally-
in-farmers-fields.aspx) [2] [http://www.allowgoldenricenow.org/the-crime-
against-humanity](http://www.allowgoldenricenow.org/the-crime-against-
humanity)

~~~
koolba
> Your allegations miss a crucial detail, Monsanto sued farmers who planted
> seeds and then sprayed them with herbicide[1]. Ie the farmer knew what he
> was doing and used the patented trait. Why shouldn’t Monsanto sue over that?
> Like many things in GMO land the myth that they sue accidental contamination
> is wrong.

I disagree that anything is wrong with doing that. The way I see it, he
identified that a number of plants were resistant to RoundUp and efficiently
figured out which they were.

It's not his fault that Monsanto's business model fails to meet up with the
reality that plants have plantable seeds.

> Monsanto has the worst PR team in history, which has made my company’s work
> much harder, but ‘Monsanto is Evil’ is a marketing slogan developed by
> Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth etc. These environmental groups are
> actually the true evil in the industry. Their campaigning has held back
> progress in the industry by many years. Smarter folks than me argue that
> their actions on Golden Rice meet all the criteria to be considered a crime
> against humanity[2]

Friend of the earth ( _lower case without a ™ symbol_ ) sure, but I'm no tree
hugger. I'm not against GMOs and think Golden Rice is amazing. I just don't
like the idea of imposing licensing restrictions on farmers. It's a dark road
that we don't need to go down.

~~~
bduerst
> fails to meet up with the reality that plants have plantable seeds.

This is a terrible argument.

Is Microsoft to blame for Windows piracy because CDs are easy to copy?

These cases aren't accidental - the farmer was very clearly copying the
technology and using it to their benefit without contributing to the IP costs.

~~~
pdkl95
> Is Microsoft to blame for Windows piracy

That isn't a comparable claim. Microsoft _is_ responsible for their choice of
business model.

> because CDs are easy to copy?

You shouldn't expect profit when your business model relies on scarcity that
doesn't exist in nature. Attempting to impose _artificial scarcity_ doesn't
work, for the same reason you cannot make a law that changes gravity. Trying
to change laws of nature by fiat only makes you look foolish.

Note that Microsoft can still run a profitable business even when their CDs
are easy to copy. They did this for decades. For most of that time, they
didn't spend much effort trying to stop piracy; unpaid copies helped maintain
their desktop monopoly. If they were successful in stopping piracy, people
might have learned about an alternative OS.

~~~
adrianN
It is my understanding that copyright and patents exist exactly to create
artificial scarcity so that the owners can extract money. I'm not sure whether
it's a good idea, but it seems to work reasonably well for what it was
designed to do.

~~~
pdkl95
> work reasonably well for what it was designed to do

An argument can be made that copyright and patent worked _before_ the digital
era.

The trick that Claude Shannon introduced may have been intended to remove
noise, but that's not all it did. Digital encoding allowed data to be repeated
_indefinitely_. Put another way, data was _scarce_ when it gains noise (lower
s/n) each time it is re-amplified; Shannon's encoding schemes allowed perfect
copies, and thus data was no longer _scarce_.

> copyright and patents exist exactly to create artificial scarcity

Copyright and patent cannot _create_ scarcity, nor were they intended to. They
rebalanced existing scarcity.

~~~
bduerst
Just because the cost to copy IP today is near nothing doesn't mean that there
are not fixed costs into the generation of IP.

Also you're right, patents and copyrights are not there to create scarcity -
an IP owner can use a license that allows absolutely everyone to use it. They
exist to give the owner a timeframe with which to recooperate costs of IP
generation (and yes, the copyright timeframe is too long but patents are
reasonable).

------
hodwik
If you don't like Monsanto's work, don't pirate it. If you like it, pay the
royalties.

It's really very simple; if you don't uphold their ability to defend their
intellectual property you destroy the business model, and you'll lose the
research.

The US Government needs to step in here -- exactly the same as they would if
Chinese companies were selling computers with pirated copies of Windows into
US stores.

~~~
Guvante
The article is about a dispute over when royalties have to be paid. Monsanto
expects to be paid every time, farmers are saying only the first generation
can have the royalty requirement by law.

~~~
Kalium
Disputes like this are why companies like Monsanto engineer in terminator
genes to make the business model viable.

~~~
jarin
No, that's why those companies have PROPOSED terminator genes. There is no
commercially available product that actually contains them.

~~~
Kalium
I sit corrected. Instead, the current typical approach is to use cross-
breeding to produce seeds that grow well the first generation and don't
produce reliable seeds themselves.

~~~
mejari
That is misleading, as the goal of that cross-breeding is not to produce
unreliable seeds, but in order to produce better results. Look up "hybrid
vigor" for details on this. Nothing about the cross-breeding is done in order
to hinder re-use of the seeds, it's just that naturally non-hybrid seeds are
less effective.

~~~
Kalium
As I understand it, the idea is to have two parent lines that when produce the
desired traits in heterozygous offspring but not in second-generation
offspring. Sort of a Mendelian DRM.

~~~
mejari
This is incorrect. As I already stated: the cross-breeding is to take
advantage of hybrid vigor[1], it is not an effort to intentionally hamper
successive generations. This same practice occurs in non-GMO, non-patented
plant breeding, and has been done for over a hundred years[2]

1:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterosis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterosis)
2:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_plant_breeding#Gree...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_plant_breeding#Green_revolution)

------
allisthemoist
> Argentine farmers had benefited substantially from its Intacta technology
> and called for “all producers to pay ... if they decide to use it.”

This sounds a lot like the music industry and their constant call for
"royalties".

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arjun1296
The indian government has cut Monsantos Royalty fees. Monsanto threatened to
leave and Govt of India said f* off.
[1][http://indianexpress.com/article/business/economy/monsanto-t...](http://indianexpress.com/article/business/economy/monsanto-
threatens-to-exit-india-over-govts-show-cause-notice/) [2]
[http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-
business/G...](http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/GM-
cotton-row-Government-says-India-not-scared-if-Monsanto-
leaves/articleshow/51429611.cms)

~~~
iNerdier
For those wondering like me about the word 'lakh' in the articles, it means
100,000.

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artur_makly
Very proud to see the new gov't doing something right for a change. But it's
probably a little too late sadly.

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joesmo
Argentina is a sovereign nation and should tell Monsanto to fuck off.

~~~
harryh
If they had told Monsanto to fuck off before agreeing to treaties that
included patent protections that would have been just fine. But first they
agreed, and now they are reneging. That's not fine.

~~~
joesmo
Seems like they're just taking a play out of the US's playbook then.

