you wouldn’t download a blueberry
Driscoll’s business model is basically like this:
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Have access to largest buyer of berries in the US (Walmart, as well as others) and monopolize berry contracts for all walmart stores
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Have a monopoly of the genetics of the berries Walmart is contracted to buy.
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Sell berry seeds, etc to farmers up front so all the risk of growing (crop failure, contamination, etc) is placed squarely on the growers and not on Driscoll. The farmers can actually owe Driscoll money if they can’t harvest.
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Monopolize the distribution rights for what the farmers produce
Fuck Driscoll and their shitty berries
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For Chinese consumers, it was a blueberry bonanza. Prices dropped so low—often $3 or less for a 9-ounce container—that state media trumpeted an era of “blueberry freedom,” in which even ordinary people can gorge on a once-exotic fruit.
For just about everyone in the blueberry business, though, it has been a knife fight, plagued by intellectual-property theft and tanking profits.
A healthy nutritious food is now cheap and widely available, but at what cost?? $3 or less apparently
Driscoll’s has filed more than 20 lawsuits against companies in China, some of which it has said took its proprietary blueberry plants, propagated them and sold them to rival growers. Some Western fruit companies worked with private investigators who went undercover at plant nurseries, posing as traders or farmers so they could buy plants and hustle them off to labs for DNA testing to prove they were pirated.
a once-exotic fruit.
isn’t perspective the best? I can walk to a park and find wild blueberries to munch, the only thing less exotic to me are raspberries that grow like weeds
Some Western fruit companies worked with private investigators who went undercover at plant nurseries, posing as traders or farmers so they could buy plants and hustle them off to labs for DNA testing to prove they were pirated.
This could become the shittiest detective story ever told.
They’re trying to dig up the corpse of that guy who stole camelia sinensis for one last big score
What? You think a bunch of Asians can grow blueberries without American assistance?
Lol get fucked Driscoll
Before I leave my comment, know I’ve read my Corey Doctorow and understand completely how companies like this could slap some IP on a blueberry genome or DNA sequence to make it proprietary. That being said:
How the fuck do you copy growing blueberries? LOL
It’s extremely stupid. It’s the same as all the Monsanto controversies. You aren’t allowed (bc of IP law somehow) to replant seeds grown from Monsanto copyrighted strains. If your crop is found to contain any monsanto genetics (they’vesued unsuccessfully for accidental cross pollination, but basically if you just save seeds) then part of your crop/sales proceeds can be seized by monsanto.
People look at this and legitimately think to themselves “yep, markets sure are efficient” when you literally can’t grow plants from seeds you own without having to give massive corporations a cut.
The porks:
“Stupid artists! It’s fine that AI steals your work and puts you out of business! Ideas are meant to be shared, information wants to be free! Have you no respect for INNOVOOSHUNZ!?”
Also the porks: “Stop using my IP! Growing blueberries is MY idea!”
I wonder if i ever get done for all my torrenting if i can say it was for “training models” since that seems to be an acceptable excuse for the corporations
Plant Breeders Rights are so fucking stupid and should not exist. IP laws should not exist, even doubly so for fucking food.
i hate IP law but i have some room in my heart that someone who takes the time and effort to develop a novel cultivar should get paid for their work.
The class of researchers who actually do the intellectual work share in a very tiny portion of the profits made from their IP.
Even in bourgeois economic theory, IP is rent seeking behaviour and encourages monopoly formation.
IP laws are the primary engine of IP theft, yeah
The class of researchers who actually do the intellectual work share in a very tiny portion of the profits made from their IP.
of course, but anyone with time and patience can selectively breed and/or graft plants and dna editing is within reach of an advanced hobbyist. fuck driscol but creating conditions where driscol can steal from some gardener who isn’t even their employee is expanding exploitation rather than restricting it as we all desire.
Naturally, private property shpuld be eliminated entirely. And eliminating IP and property in the software world is a good start
Researchers should absolutely be compensated for their contributions to developing new cultivars. As with everything, outsourcing this research to the private sector has been an absolute disaster
You can remove the room in your heart. Most research that disrupts is not done by the private companies, but by researchers. Most of this advancements are typically done when they force the collaboration between researchers with (mostly) public funds that an enterprises takes the profit. Heck, even LLMs were done by university researchers that happen to collaborate with Google to get funding and compute power.
“IP theft” of growing blueberries? We live in the stupidest of all possible realities
Meanwhile all your private human moments you put online are scraped and stolen to make a demon of water and power consumption
But that’s not theft… unlike these blueberries here!
“IP theft” aka growing your own food and preventing foreign corporations from extracting profit from your own people
Sooner or later you know damn well the porks are going to declare profit to be a human right.
Meanwhile they have a nervous breakdown when you ask them not to label cheese as parmesan when it’s not from the proper region
“IP theft”
capitalists think they are gods who created nature
Awww did someone not understand how other nations don’t have to respect your corporate rights? How maybe making things cheaper for everyone is broadly a good thing so no one will help you!
If your “theft” results in less hungry people in the world keep thievin’
But what about the precious rule of law? Don’t do illegal stuff that’s bad, that’s why it’s illegal.
It’s illegal because it is bad, it is bad because it is illegal.
It’s legal because it is good, it is good because it is legal.
Therefore legal extraction of the surplus value of your labour is good, you see? No need to doubt the ethics and fairness in that hahaha, it’s legal after all! Keep protesting peacefully and with respect to the police, patriot 🫡
Going into my neighbours garden, scorching and salting the earth, because I grew sunflowers first and I have to protect my intellectual property.
Okay so, capitalists will find something super beneficial for humanity, recognise the money that they can make by keeping it hidden & having an advantage in the market; Then when you do what they should have done and utilise this net positive on mankind, they call you an evil thief.
My resentment for the bourgeoisie never stops rising.
I’ll bet it has somthing to do with sticking them in the ground and watering them sometimes.
