Ask Lemmy

You have to be in the US less than 30 days a year do get that deduction.

In the US, because of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, it is illegal to defeat any sort of digital copy protection. That's why it's ok to rip CDs to your iPod, but you can't rip DVDs to your computer.

Yeah. Some places.

I think they’re talking about weed

The US has patented GMO wheat and corn. Agrotech companies have sued farmers for growing wheat from seeds that blew into their fields from a neighbouring property.

Corporations have patents on their varieties. This isn’t defending the practice, just explaining it

certain housing associations won't let you plant such things in the ground, but if it's in a box or container it's okay

Certain produce

It's not based on country either. If lays catches you growing their patented strains of potatoes without their consent, they'll come after you no matter what country you are growing the potatoes in.

I don't know if you're in the US, but if so, it's probably not that anyone purchased those rights, but rather that under, as I recall, Western US water right conventions, where land is more arid, if someone is a pre-existing user of water, you can't go upstream from them and block off water from flowing to them (which people would probably tend to do, otherwise).

kagis

Yeah. Apparently the legal term is "prior-appropriation water rights".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prior-appropriation_water_rights

In the American legal system, prior appropriation water rights is the doctrine that the first person to take a quantity of water from a water source for "beneficial use" (agricultural, industrial or household) has the right to continue to use that quantity of water for that purpose.[1][2] Subsequent users can take the remaining water for their own use if they do not impinge on the rights of previous users. The doctrine is sometimes summarized, "first in time, first in right".

Prior appropriation rights do not constitute a full ownership right in the water, merely the right to withdraw it, and can be abrogated if not used for an extended period of time.

Origin

Water is very scarce in the West and so must be allocated sparingly, based on the productivity of its use. The prior appropriation doctrine developed in the Western United States from Spanish (and later Mexican) civil law and differs from the riparian water rights that apply in the rest of the United States. The appropriation doctrine originated in Gold-Rush–era California, when miners sought to acquire water for mining operations. In the 1855 case of Irwin v. Phillips, Matthew Irwin diverted a stream for his mining operation. Shortly afterward, Robert Phillips started a mining operation downstream and eventually tried to divert the water back to its original streambed. The case was taken to the California Supreme Court, which ruled for Irwin.[3]

EDIT: Oh, though they do say that the rights can be sold, so maybe someone did purchase them.