this goes into regular things too of course.. food colour.. corn flakes.. all sorts of stuff.. copyrighted, proprietary and patented to a company.. that's just freaky

Open source genetic engineering

That's one of the major concerns of the anti-GMO activity - that the varieties of plants are essentially common world heritage and should not be available for patent.

See also: Sowing for the Apocalypse, about the world seed bank.

thanks for the NYer link Mikok.. I guess I've always known that there's some economic ownership problems afoot with the fact that companies that supply farmers with 'stuff' can be exploitative with price setting and whatnot but I was thinking how it's unfortunate that e.g. the US State department lobbies other countries to open their markets to GM crops, and how I just find that distasteful not because of GM crops but just because of this idea of external technology being forced onto people instead of countries developing it themselves, and suddenly my anti-patent/anti-proprietary-code take on technology platforms and standards suddenly overlaid with the concept of food and they immediately segued together really well.

I know there's stuff going on in science in general with regards to the adoption of open culture, with people publishing scientific papers that aren't behind incredible financial access barriers and .. of all people, I think I read Michael Crichton write an Op-Ed in 2006 talking about how all sorts of molecules are being copyrighted or something along those lines and that it was a terrible idea.

Here it is: this essay breaks the law

so I'm in the shower thinking about genetically modified food ...

Least. Promising. Penthouse Forum Opening. Ever.

you say that now, but wait till you fuck a franken-jack-o-lantern