Techdirt. Stories filed under "nature" Easily digestible tech news... http://www.techdirt.com/ en-us Techdirt. Stories filed under "nature"http://www.techdirt.com/images/td-88x31.gifhttp://www.techdirt.com/ Mon, 11 Feb 2013 17:00:00 PST DailyDirt: The Tree Of Life Michael Ho http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101109/09093411773/dailydirt-tree-life.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101109/09093411773/dailydirt-tree-life.shtml
  • A single-celled organism in Norway doesn't quite fit the label of being an animal, plant, fungus, alga or protist -- but it is a eukaryote because it has a cell membrane. This microorganism isn't easily classified, and it might be our oldest living ancestor. [url]
  • Biologists are finding about 2,000 new marine species every year, but there are an estimated 700,000 to a million marine species living in the world's oceans. It's going to take a while to document all these organisms, and hopefully, we'll be able to do it before more species go extinct. [url]
  • Evolutionary biologists might need to re-think their understanding of how early animals developed. Previously, animals with a mouth and anus were classified as either protostomes or deuterostomes, depending on how they grew... but a recently-studied protostome throws a wrench into the naming conventions and how biologists look at the largest branch of animals in the tree of life. [url]
    • If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

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    ]]>     urls-we-dig-up http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20101109/09093411773     Tue, 9 Aug 2011 09:25:23 PDT If Even The Death Penalty Won't Stop Infringement... Perhaps A Different Approach Is Needed Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110808/12354815439/if-even-death-penalty-wont-stop-infringement-perhaps-different-approach-is-needed.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110808/12354815439/if-even-death-penalty-wont-stop-infringement-perhaps-different-approach-is-needed.shtml empirical evidence that enforcement doesn't work, from the massive SSRC report, but still politicians and industry folks seem to think enforcement is the only way forward. Rick Falkvinge questions how far it needs to go before people realize enforcement won't stop copying when copying feels totally natural. He points to the situation a few centuries ago in France, where the king set up (and sold) monopolies on certain fabric patterns -- and when people kept copying the fabric patterns, they kept ratcheting up enforcement mechanisms until it was punishable by death. And out of that, sixteen thousand people ended up dying.

    But at least copying went down, right? Nope. There was no noticeable change in the amount of copied fabrics:
    Capital punishment didn’t even make a dent in the pirating of the fabrics. Despite the fact that some villages had been so ravaged that everybody knew somebody personally who had been executed by public torture, the copying continued unabated at the same level.
    So why do politicians and industry folk still think that greater legal threats will make a difference?

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    ]]>     enforcement-doesn't-work http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20110808/12354815439     Mon, 29 Mar 2010 15:13:45 PDT Judge: Gene Patents Are Invalid Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100329/1506458769.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100329/1506458769.shtml huge ruling, U.S. District Judge Robert Sweet has said that gene patents are invalid. As you may recall, last May, the ACLU was the first to finally challenge whether or not genes could be patented. There was a lot of back and forth over the case, with many saying that a ruling against gene patents would throw a wrench into the business plans of many companies, because so many biotech/medical companies have been relying on the idea that gene patents must be valid for so long. But just because many companies relied on a mistaken understanding of patent law, doesn't mean that it should be allowed to continue. The judge made the point clear when it came to gene patents, saying that they:
    "are directed to a law of nature and were therefore improperly granted."
    The case was brought against Myriad Genetics, who will surely appeal, so this is nowhere close to over. But it involved a test for breast cancer, that Myriad basically had a monopoly over -- and the claim was that this not only made it more difficult for women to get tested, but it also greatly discouraged other research in the field. In part, this was because the patents that Myriad held were incredibly broad.

    Patents, of course, are not supposed to be granted on things found in in nature -- and it's hard to argue against the idea that genes are found in nature. Supporters of gene patents often claim that they're not really gene patents, but a patent on identifying the gene, which is a nice semantic game that the judge clearly saw through. This is a huge step forward for encouraging more real research into genetic testing, rather than locking up important information.

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