I think this song by Captain Tractor is appropriate.
To me, all that page proves is that the PR spin doctors at Monsanto are significantly more talented than the guy at John Deere who wrote the letter Cory linked to before.
I don’t know if GMO products are bad for health, but by giving companies, farmers, and people on the Internet something to argue about, they are certainly bad for mental health.
-jeff
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“will sue” was too strong. “could sue” is not. As for it never having happened, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percy_Schmeiser .
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IANAL, but I’m going to go with patent infringement.
I’m not walking anything back. If you read your Monsanto piece, it says nothing about how the round-up ready seed originally ended up growing around the edges of his field in 1997, only that he intentionally saved that seed after he realized it was resistant to the pesticide and used it the next year. It’s the 1998 crop they say “didn’t come from birds or the wind”. He never said it did. He said the accidental contamination happened a year earlier. And I stand by that. Not even Monsanto is claiming he stole seed from a neighboring field.
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Yeah, the scenario there is that the giant megacorps have released diseases that kill the wild strains and will sell you the seeds to the resistant versions, but those seeds are mules, so you have to buy more later.
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Soylent DRM eats people!
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I’ll give it a read, thanks for the link.
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That’s right, you’re “just asking questions” - sound familiar? (facepalm)
IAAL 
but not in in intellectual property; but I do know my way around a search engine!
There was the Bowman case that ruled that a farmer couldn’t save seeds he bought and plant them; there was also a case brought by a group called “Organic Seed Growers & Trade Association” to invalidate Monsanto’s patents because of a fear of the very type of lawsuit you brought up. The lower court dismissed the claim because there hadn’t been any suit by Monsanto, only the fear of one; but the dismissal was conditional on Monsanto abiding by a promise they made not to file such a suit against farmers whose crops were contaminated this way. Link
But, I am not aware of any case where they sued someone whose fields were contaminated/pollinated by Monsanto genetics. The question I have is, how far would a court go in forcing Monsanto to abide by this promise?
If someone on this board knows of such a case, please share!
Still doesn’t. I have a moped with a 2 stroke engine that doesn’t even require a battery, much less a computer. It also spews as much pollution as a decked-out SUV.
The reason why we no longer have unreliable carburetors the size of washing machines under our modern hoods in passenger cars today is because of the on board computer’s ability to regulate fuel/air with so much more accuracy. This gets us the emissions control we crave with less complexity and greater reliability.
Similar to how Compaq created/entered the PC clone market, I would like to see some integrator:
- Buy DRM encumbered tractors (either new or secondhand at auction.)
- Do “cleanroom” reverse engineering of these DRM control modules to their essential functions (while ignoring the DRM functions which are not going to be re-created anyways.)
- Remove all DRM encumbered control modules.
- Replace all DRM encumbered control modules with Common Off The Shelf equivalents.
- Sell (or rent with a suitable Service Level Agreement) DRM free tractors.
- Sell after-market conversion kits for same tractors too.
This (firmware replacement) could even be similar to how DD-WRT or Tomato are loaded onto “Commodity” Linksys WRT-54G routers/access points.
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