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Politics : Bill Clinton Scandal - SANITY CHECK -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Big D who wrote (29868)	1/25/1999 10:36:00 PM
From: Lizzie Tudor	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 67261

Wow what a surprise. You are from the Bible Belt. Thanks for your explanation of decency. Why dont you have a conversation with Bob Barr about what decency is.

To: Big D who wrote (29868)	1/26/1999 9:32:00 AM
From: j g cordes	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 67261

Little D.. I had a good conversation with Tom actually. People come in all shapes and sizes. Because you are small in your thinking, small in your abilities and small in your ambitions.. you wish to make everyone else on this planet small also. Very few things are simple, but simple-minded people always insist they have the easy answer. Stop your complaining and look around... its not 1950, its 1999 and next year is 2000. The population has quadrupled since you last thought globally. Why don't you go outside today, take a long walk, volunteer at the library or a VA hospital.

To: Big D who wrote (29868)	1/26/1999 9:54:00 AM
From: j g cordes	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 67261

Instead of getting worked up over Clinton, you should be worrying about the patenting of basic intellectual commoditites. Is this serious? Yes it is. Lets see how deep your roots are. Example: Traditional farming practices include harvesting a seed crop for planting in years to come. One harvests the crop and also sets aside a portion of seed from the crop, especially if the crop has been productive. Deeper traditions include sharing that seed or selling it with neighboring farms. This makes the area more productive and acts as an insurance against failures in two ways. One by having stores of seed. Secondly by having a diverse gene pool of seed variations being held for future need. The Problem: Seed companies have gone bio-tech and legal. The are selling the seed to the farmers and sueing them if they harvest the seeds from their crop, while prohibiting them from sharing seed let alone selling their own harvested crop seed to anyone else. Why? Because they've patented their seed. More than that some are patenting the very DNA at the core of a crop class, then claiming all derivatives of that crop class are their intellectual property. In other words, a farmer is not the owner of anything more than one harvest. At one time the world revolted against serfs working without ownership of the land, now they own the land and can only work as servants of the patent holders. Out West here, these are issues worth fighting for. Example: There's a company that holds a patent on the concept of doing business on the internet. They've sent out notice to any and all e-commerce vendors that they must pay a royalty to conduct any retail business on the internet. Example: Many companies are working furiously to spec out the human genome complex. As they discover these parts of us, they are patenting them as their intellectual property. Next they will discover that the knowledge and personal sense of God exists in a portion of the brain and will patent the rights to that as well. Example: A surgeon discovered a surgical technique that's particularly helpful in catarac operations. Its a pattern only, for closure of incisions. He was demanded to pay 50,000 dollars by someone who patented the idea... forget the patients, forget the obligations of medicine. The world of ideas and concepts are being carved up into patent ownership. Example: A mathematician patented a non-repeating geometric equation, then sued Kimberly Clark that their toilet paper motif used that pattern. Example: Bill Gates is buying up photos of evey kind. Not just the "collectible" art photos, but the basic visual record of the 20th Century. He will own visual history. He'll be able to decide what photos were pertinent, what weren't. What's for sale, what isn't. Your family album may one day be banned by someone who buys the rights to your images.