This is important because this means you can not only re-plant the seeds from your harvest, but also have a legal framework and full permission to do so. Personally I never cared much for gardening, but the independence from big companies makes growing your own food much more attractive.
Knowing I can pirate plants makes want to take up gardening all of the sudden.
To add some context (and not to justify this in any way), they aren’t licensing “corn”. They’re licensing some random corn that they genetically modified to have a protein for producing betacaratin, or something like that. It’s not like they’ve patented a wild variety of corn.
When it gets really frustrating is if you plant your corn next to your neighbors corn and they cross pollonate (because it’s corn. That’s what it does.) And then you keep the seeds to plant next year. And then that’s violating some license. It’s like “I didn’t ask for your stupid genetic modifications, and now you’re going to charge me money for them?!”
further reading https://ohioline.osu.edu/factsheet/agf-153 https://www.agry.purdue.edu/ext/corn/news/articles.00/gmo_issues-000307.html https://royalsociety.org/topics-policy/projects/gm-plants/if-we-grow-gm-crops-will-they-cross-breed-with-other-plants/ https://civileats.com/2014/09/05/this-breeder-is-working-on-organic-ready-corn-that-blocks-gmo-contamination/
I’m a gardener and let me tell you, if I put a fucking seed in the dirt and it grows anyone and everyone that thinks they have a say in that can go get fucked. Some things are sacred.
Ever tried growing anything from some supermarket fruit or vegetable? It rarely ever works, because the pants are engineers in way that their seeds are sterile. And if you find a seed that does grow, and you breed a new variety from that, you are creating derivative work and are violating the license, which you can be sued for. It’s basically DRM for crops.
Yup, I do grow things from the supermarket all the time. It’s a myth, most things grow just fine. Sometimes they spray growth suppressors on things, like garlic, to prevent them from sprouting in transit, but otherwise it works fine every time.
As far as whether it’s legal or not, again, those cocksuckers can go get fucked. I’ll sell the shit too if I want to, it’s fucking mine.
Today I learned that there are close sourced plant seeds!? …apparently?
