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New EU Seed Law

In what’s an obvious first step to clear the way for patents and GMOs, the European Union is preparing a new seed law to replace the existing one.  Several months ago the EU considered what to do with the current legislation and discussed 3 possibilities; maintain current legislation unchanged, modify current legislation, or drop current legislation.  In their wisdom, they decided seed legislation was necessary, but should be changed.  With this as a foregone conclusion, they have opened a period of public consultation on how best to change the current seed laws.

In their published documents they offer a number of scenarios, and while some are worse than others, none are completely acceptable.

There’s honestly little hope they’ll actually take public opinion into account, but it’s still very important to give them a run for their money.  Maybe, if they get a large response, and they can see people are very upset about their plans, it may have some impact.  Please try to submit a response if you can.  If you’re unable to read through all of their documents and submit a response using their form, please just send them an email stating your objections to seed laws in general and the registration of varieties.

I’ll try to put together as much information as I can together with arguments, before the deadline for submission.  If you have any ideas or suggestions, please give them here!  I’ll also post my response, so if nothing else, please consider replacing my name with your own and submitting it yourself.

The European seed laws affect everyone everywhere on the planet, and everyone everywhere should respond to this public consultation.  The EU is the largest economy in the world, and rules that become established here will be pushed onto other countries as well.  Above all else it’s vital to protect our rights to save and regrow our own seeds, no matter where in the world we live.

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Plot With a View

Heguiberto of Weird Combinations sent me an email a few days ago to tell me about his blog. It’s been around for a while, but I hadn’t noticed it before, and I was very happy to hear about it.

Check out the view from his community garden! It looks out on the San Francisco Mission neighborhood, Twin Peaks and the Sutro Tower, parts of the Civic Center with a glimpse of the upper parts of the of the Golden Gate Bridge towers.

One of the nice things about his blog is he makes the connection between gardening and food, which of course some other blogs do too, but it’s still nice to see.  He and his partner eat mostly vegetarian, so this is emphasized in the blog too.

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Blogs, Catching Up

I have several posts to make over the next day or two as I catch up from the Christmas holidays.  First, a few blogs and posts for your reading pleasure.

Mike of Subsistence Pattern has been a reader and commenter here for a long time.  One of the things that really stands out about his blog are the discussions he cultivates among his readers.  If you want to chat with him and other well known veggie bloggers, it’s a great place to go.

Laura of Mas du Diablo in France has for many years been an active participant in the Blogger Seed Network here, as well as actively blogging about her garden and cooking.  I recently exchanged some emails with here, and got some links to new blogs she working on, showing off her paintings, more paintings and cooking.  Imagine 4 blogs!  I have a hard enough time keeping up with this one.

Leigh of The Extreme Gardener recently posts about her experiences growing TPS (True Potato Seeds). Great post!

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New Links!

Sal just sent me an email to tell me about his new blog Sweet Rock Farm, and garden/farm on Gabriola Island off the BC coast in Canada.  He has a great plant trade list, including a number of fruit trees and vines.  He’s now been added to the Seed Network here.  Have a look at his blog, and stop by and say hi!

A fried of mine here in Holland, Anita, has a expat blog.  It’s called Greetings from Holland.  I keep meaning to mention it.  I don’t often write about Holland, and in fact Anita and I were recently talking about that.  She thinks I should write more about Amsterdam and the Netherlands, instead of all the difficult subjects I address here, and she’s probably right.  Anita on the other hand writes a lot about Holland, including things about really interesting places she visits.  She has a lot of great pictures.  If you want to learn something about living in the Netherlands, hers is the blog to visit.

Finally, Randy who lives in North Carolina has a blog called Randy and Meg’s Garden Paradise.  He also has an associated blog about his carpentry projects called the Liberal Handyman’s Blog.  He has some really amazing photographs on his blogs, and his carpentry projects look really interesting.

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Pirate Party

Probably a lot of people reading this have heard of the Swedish Pirate Party or perhaps The Pirate Bay website where you can find things like videos, music, software and other things to download, copyrighted and otherwise.

In fact the idea of the Pirate Party has spread worldwide, and many countries have similar emerging parties.

The Pirate Party really came to peoples attention when The Pirate Bay website was raided by the Swedish police.  It was raided, not because it was in violation of Swedish or other law, it was raided on the request of the US government who threatened trade sanctions against Sweden(!) if they didn’t shut the website down.  In Sweden this is illegal.  Politicians are not allowed to request the police to do this, but they did it anyway.

In the following video, Peter Sunde, one of the founders of The Pirate Bay website tells the story of The Pirate Bay, the Swedish Pirate Party and Flattr:

In the last European elections the Swedish Pirate Party won 2 seats in the EU Parliament. Since the ISP of The Pirate Bay was ordered by a judge to disconnect the website, the Swedish Pirate Party decided to become an ISP and now hosts The Pirate Bay website in the Swedish parliament building. The Swedish constitution gives them immunity from prosecution as long as their actions are consistent with their party mandate. This is the reason The Pirate Bay website is still available on the Internet.

I am no spokesperson for the Swedish or any other Pirate Party. In fact one of the things I’ve discovered recently is there is a huge diversity of opinions within these parties. As a rule however, these parties are opposed to the injustices imposed by copyright holders on users of the Internet. These include lawsuits, threats of lawsuits, disconnection of Internet service and other actions.

I think many Pirate Party members feel like I do, that downloading anything from the Internet is a good thing. It is the nature of how the Internet works technically. It’s how information and computer tools are distributed and it’s how people communicate. This is simply an important aspect of how the Internet works, and people should use it as such.

Few people are opposed to creators of this content being paid! I think it’s a fine idea for people to be paid for their work. The idea of enforcing this payment by imposing rules on the use of the Internet is seriously flawed.

There are even some politicians who believe people who break these or other rules should have their Internet service disconnected! Can you imagine this? This is like taking away someone’s library card, because they’ve abused the information in the books.

In today’s world the Internet is far beyond a luxury. If you’re a person of any age in school, you’ll almost certainly receive a portion of your assignments on the Internet. Some companies now only bill via the Internet. It’s simply the largest and most important source of information and communication, and it’s not something you take away from someone because they’ve been bad! Already it’s a necessary part of life, and in the coming years it’s going to be even more important.

This video has some Dutch but it’s mostly in English, and features the founder of the Swedish Pirate Party talking a bit about the party principles:

While these principles apply now to the Internet, there are ramifications for Democracy as a whole. Do we want seed companies to someday be able to tell us we can’t trade seeds over the Internet?