> Chuck Grimes wrote:
>
> >The way out of this quagmire is to destroy the copyright and patent
> >laws that form the legal foundation for this corporate exploitation.
>
> As someone who earns a living of sorts as a writer, I'm not too
> enthusiastic about junking copyright law. Is there any way to undermine
> Monsanto without undoing us humble scribblers?
I'm afraid what you're suffering from Doug, is the old saw about confusing liberty and license. Of course it's our corporate masters that are doing the confusing, and us peons who are paying, same as it ever was.
But, there is a (stop-gap) solution (short of the revolution).
A simple reset to the state of the law circa 1970 should suffice. It's only in recent decades (with more than a little help from the Conservative anti-"activist" <g> majority on the Supreme Court) that the traditional boundaries of what can be patented and how it can be protected have been radically shifted.
1980 was a particularly bad year -- the notion of patenting life forms dates to 1980 Supreme Court decision, and the same year saw a law encouraging joint ventures between corporations and research universities using federal funds, allowing the universities to get the patents and the companies to get exclusive licensing agreements. But I like to go back at least another decade, just to be on the safe side.
-- Paul Rosenberg Reason and Democracy rad at gte.net
"Let's put the information BACK into the information age!"