Bracket Watch: EA Upset Early, Comcast Beats Monsanto For 'Worst Company' Award
from the cinderella-story dept
It's the time of year, when victories are had or not, dreams are realized or dashed along the playing surface, and champions are either born or unseated. Being from Chicago, I've been through this before. I've seen my heroes fall and experienced the heartbreak of having victory snatched from my guys in heartbreaking fashion. Still, even with that experience, it never gets easier.
Which is why we should all be standing up and doing a slow-clap for Electronic Arts, whose "Worst Company" championship string has finally come to an end. And it's all thanks to Comcast, who narrowly defeated cartoonishly evil megacorporation Monsanto in the final showdown. The road to not-glory, however, was not without its controversy.
Comcast’s road to the Poo started out without a speedbump, as the company powered through the first three rounds without ever giving up more than 30% of the vote. And with two-time reigning champ EA eliminated in Round One by Comcast’s merger partner Time Warner Cable, followed by three-time consecutive runner-up Bank of America’s surprise defeat at the hands of Walmart, Comcast seemed destined for the Final Death Match.It's been a good run for EA these past two years, in which they deftly ran the treat-customers-like-criminals offense and the delete-yo-crap defense. That kind of strategy led to their distinction for being the only two-time winning and repeat "Worst Company" champion. But if Michael Jordan retired (multiple times), Muhammed Ali fell, and the Lakers turned into whatever you call whatever they are now, then it was only a matter of time before a new, more youthfully horrible champion arose to unseat EA. And that example of awful is Comcast, who appears to think that Mr. Potter from It's A Wondeful Life was a template for how to do things.
But the nation’s largest cable and Internet provider (which is trying to become even larger), almost got stopped in its track by first-time contender SeaWorld, riding high on waves of negative publicity tied to the documentary Blackfish. Comcast pulled off a buzzer-beater to hold off SeaWorld and earn its place in the Final Death Match. From the onset of the day-long bout, lawsuit-lovin’, herbicide-makin’ Monsanto was within striking distance of the Philly Kid, but Comcast gained a hair-thin edge early on and never ceded the lead.
And, just so we're all clear here, they beat Monsanto, a company that is attempting to put a corporate and IP stranglehold on food. Food. You know, that thing you need every day in order to live. That means that if you sat the average voter down and asked them which was worse, a big company getting bigger so they can control how you get your television, or the same scenario but with the thing that lets you live, people will choose the former.
I'm not sure that makes a whole lot of sense, but I'll refrain from taking away any of Comcast's glory today. Congrats, you terrible congress-bribing megalith you!
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Filed Under: worst company
Companies: comcast, ea, monsanto
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Well...
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Oh wait, they never win.
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Re: Well...
EA has been on my boycott list for the last few years and will sty there until their rotten corpse turns to dust.
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Correction: play another game. Preferably not one from EA.
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If you're a farmer and want to do business with Monsanto, you sign a contract and get to use their patented seed. If you don't want to do business with them, you don't have a problem so long as you don't illegally use their patented seed.
There is no "stranglehold" here.
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Or have neighbors that use their seeds or pick up the seeds from a third party.
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Do a quick search on Techdirt for "Monsanto" and you'll find two pages of articles about them.
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Monsanto actually will offer to remove any of their crops that blow into your farm free of charge. Let that sink in for a while.
The people who get sued are those who *know* that they have Monsanto seed, be it obtained from an illicit source or carried in by the wind, and purposefully sprayed Roundup in their fields so that the non-Monsanto stuff would die off. Let me repeat that for you: they knew they were handling Monsanto seed without permission and chose to kill off the non-Monsanto stuff. These guys aren't victims in the slightest. They purposefully broke the rules so that they could make a big stink.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percy_Schmeiser#Monsanto_v._Schmeiser
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki /Bowman_v._Monsanto_Co.#Background
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How does patent law cover any of that? That's the problem. The patent law that allows this is fucked.
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What rules? You can't violate a contract you didn't sign in the first place.
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That is what makes monsanto so evil, they purposefully contaminate the plants of all farmers that are in range of any field that grows genetically engineered crops and because of the way patent law is, this bastard of a company can monopolize seed production by abusing natural growth of the plants in question.
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1. A large, powerful entity does something sleazy.
2. A person finds out about it.
3. That person takes deliberate action to bring it to the attention of the public.
4. Therefore, that person is the villain here.
Well... I suppose Mike Rogers would agree with you, but he's not really good company to be in.
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They could have avoided their aggressive legal strategy in several ways!
Culpable or not, the cases suffer from the same overall problem: The judges being far too friendly towards the idea of patenting a self-replicating entity and that is actually the crux of the problem: The legal system is terrible at understanding any kind of science!
Self-replicating entities should never be patentable as to avoid farmers having to get their fields abused by their neighbors contracts with a company. Free of charge removal as an argument is an insult to your own intelligence. It is not a good deal for the farmer...
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That just sounds so wrong on its face. Patented seed...
I'm pretty sure that just those two words make Monsanto the most evil company in the world. Because they weren't making enough money selling bug spray. They had to own the rights to food, too. Who wants to bet they're working on "patented water"?
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Go back to 50 years ago, and tell people that someone wants to produce a new, genetically-engineered type of seeds that will:
1) be sterile and not yield new seeds for the next year's crop
2) contain dominant genes, such that they can be cross-pollinated into nearby fields and render that crop sterile as well
3) be the only seeds that are not adversely affected by a special poison sold by the same person
...they would never believe it. They'd think you were talking about the script to the next James Bond movie or something! The fact that we are discussing whether or not a contract makes this sort of Bond-villainy legitimate, rather than whether or not Monsanto execs should be rounded up and put on trial for crimes against humanity just underscores how far down the rabbit hole we've gone in the last few decades.
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There is currently no seed company that employs this technology. It was researched and developed but never commercialized. Yet this meme is repeated throughout Internet and social activist circles on a daily basis for years ongoing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_use_restriction_technology
As for the Roundup Ready stuff, Roundup (glyphosate) existed for decades before the technology existed to make Roundup-tolerant varieties of plants. Had RR strains not been developed, Roundup would have simply been another herbicide that people used (just not on the plants they are trying to grow).
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https://kobi5.com/news/politics/item/money-pouring-in-for-local-gmo-ban-campaign.html?cate gory_id=15
I suppose you don't care about multi-national corporations buying local elections, either. They've got their product in the ground from coast-to-coast, but they just can't countenance that there's one little place that wants to decide for themselves.
Monsanto is as evil as a company can get.
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Does it pay well? If you "have to deal" with "this sort of ignorance" "every day" it sounds like a job to me. Why not step out and tell us about it instead of posting as an anonymous coward. Are they hiring? I'm pretty sure I can suppress my morals and be a paid troll if the money's right.
Do you have any other accounts besides Monsanto, or do they keep you busy enough putting out fires on the internet?
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2) contain dominant genes, such that they can be cross-pollinated into nearby fields and render that crop sterile as well
3) be the only seeds that are not adversely affected by a special poison sold by the same person
Instead of being able to sue the farmer for "cropyright"infringement, Monsanto should have to recompense the farmer for the next thousand harvests.
Whenever you look back in history, you will see civilizations fall as soon as some catastrophe destroys their crops. So what does our society, which may be able to invent environmentally independent farming soon (and thus be spared the fate of our predecessors), do?
It builds a self destruction switch by insane laws!
And you thought the intellectual monopoly was bad.
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Not even bugs want to eat Monsanto crops, and bugs'll eat anything. And you really, really don't want a company owning the rights to food. If you can't see what a bad idea that is, then you're a little dizzy.
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The problem is self-replicating entities. Not food.
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"...please educate yourself on the controversies re: Monsanto before making comments." /irony
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"Your Seeds is trespassing"....!!!!
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But the company with DRMed crops also loses against an entertainment company. WTF.
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Still, I think if Consumerist had a greater percentage of global readers, they could have snuck in there. (If Consumerist was Canadian, I think Rogers would be a lock for the final four...)
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Monsanto's misbehavior affects us all generally, but the real pain of those effects is less immediate and more long-term.
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