Genes want to be free (MP3=GMO)

[Major Variola (ret.)]

I caught a session of the CA legislature hearing folks talk about GMOs.
Many of the speakers were wanting to ban them from CA, worrying that
if they arrive, they'll contaminate agriculture & commerical fishing,
thereby closing markets (some of which want GMO-free food)
or adding to producer costs via diagnostic tests to assure those
markets.

It struck me how 1. futile this is 2. similar to the RIAA's efforts to
stop file sharing.  Because in both cases you can't stop *others* from
inserting a gene, or ripping a track.  And once others do so, its very
difficult to stop their propogation --information wants to be free,
as the teenagers say, or more accurately, is readily copied.

And *short of a police state*, you can't catch 100% of them.  (This
point I learned from this list.)

There are a lot of dead British sheep and Hong Kong chickens, but
pathogens
(information) will reappear, and the pathogen-sharing (P2P) conditions
continue.
Hoof & mouth, avian flu,  BSE, SARS, HIV.  Napster, Morpheus, KaZaa,
Gnutella, etc.

If you say you have no fruit when driving into CA,
the CA food police (yes, they exist) won't search your car.
(Again, the point about anything less than a police state.)

The RIAA can screw with CD formats and
try to 0wn hardware OEMs and ISPs,
but someone will just use the analog hole,
and encrypted onion-routing P2P.

Maybe Zebra mussels will contain a cure for SARS :-)