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Why is Monsanto so hated?

roger said:
Well, perhaps you should inform the newspapers and courts.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,96797,00.html
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2004-03-23-riaa-suits_x.htm
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704584804575644610726717900.html
http://www.torontosun.com/tech/news/2010/11/04/15967161.html
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And, like I said, they're wrong

Less snarkily, 'downloading' is pretty much understood to involve using file sharing services, which by default makes you a sharer.
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You can try using that sort of defense, I suspect you'll lose though.

The truth is the only RIAA mandate is for UPloading (or rather in RIAA mandate terms, illegal distribution) of copyrighted media. You can call that "downloading" if you want but you'd be wrong

(including the judge in the last linked article, where a woman received first a $1.9MM and then a $1.5MM fine for 24 songs! Two CDs worth of music!).
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Glad you brought her up. Originally she was offered a settlement of 1200 dollars plus a 45 dollar court fee. After the first round of negotiations she was offered a 600 dollar settlement. Lawrence Lessig's minions decided to make her the posterboy for their cause, then abandoned her once the courts settled it in the RIAA's favor. She had an easy and criminal record free way out of this, quite a bit less than stealing a single CD from a store would have been, but she rejected it
 
Patenting genes is wrought with problems.

(Cool, I found "Debatepedia", thats going to be an interesting source to look up the BS debates like vaccines and autism and see how they handle it, but I digress...)


Are gene patents, particularly related to food and agricultural products, a good idea?

On the medical side of gene patent controversy: Why the Gene Patenting Controversy Persists

Here's a summary in a nutshell from the Human Genome Project web site:

What are some of the potential arguments for gene patenting?
Researchers are rewarded for their discoveries and can use monies gained from patenting to further their research.
The investment of resources is encouraged by providing a monopoly to the inventor and prohibiting competitors from making, using, or selling the invention without a license.
Wasteful duplication of effort is prevented.
Research is forced into new, unexplored areas.
Secrecy is reduced and all researchers are ensured access to the new invention.

What are some of the potential arguments against gene patenting?
Patents of partial and uncharacterized cDNA sequences will reward those who make routine discoveries but penalize those who determine biological function or application (inappropriate reward given to the easiest step in the process).
Patents could impede the development of diagnostics and therapeutics by third parties because of the costs associated with using patented research data.
Patent stacking (allowing a single genomic sequence to be patented in several ways such as an EST, a gene, and a SNP) may discourage product development because of high royalty costs owed to all patent owners of that sequence; these are costs that will likely be passed on to the consumer.
Because patent applications remain secret until granted, companies may work on developing a product only to find that new patents have been granted along the way, with unexpected licensing costs and possible infringement penalties.
Costs increase not only for paying for patent licensing but also for determining what patents apply and who has rights to downstream products.
Patent holders are being allowed to patent a part of nature --a basic constituent of life; this allows one organism to own all or part of another organism.
Private biotechs who own certain patents can monopolize certain gene test markets.
Patent filings are replacing journal articles as places for public disclosure --reducing the body of knowledge in the literature.
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Monsanto is evil. They used to shrink people at Disneyland. I was lucky to get out alive.
 
Myths and real problems about GMFs both exist.

Genetically modified foods is where the reaction to Monsanto stems from, rather than the patents but the patents allowed the problems with suing farmers because pollen inadvertently contaminated a field and Monsanto had the power to unfairly overwhelm the little guy.

Goliath and David: Monsanto's Legal Battles against Farmers
Monsanto has sued many a farmer when their GM crops have turned up on the farmer's fields even though the farmers say they never planted them (examples [1] [2]). Farmers who get into the Roundup-Ready (RR) System lose their independence, and are obliged to sign a lengthy and restrictive agreement. [3]. What's more Monsanto contracts out to private investigation firms like Pinkerton, to regularly check up on their farmers (and independent, non-GM farmers as well), taking samples unannounced from their fields to make sure they are not in violation [4] [5]. It also maintains a hotline so farmers can turn in their neighbors for suspected violations.
According to Monsanto vs. U.S. Farmers Monsanto pursues hundreds of new investigative leads a year, 600 in 2003 for example, aimed at farmers....

...To be fair, there are undoubtedly a percentage of cases wherein the "violating" farmer signed the contract with full knowledge of what he was getting himself into. Equally without doubt however, there are many who either signed without reading (or understanding) the fine print, or who were perhaps given a bag of seed by a friend (not uncommon), or whose crops were pollinated by a neighbor's GM field - the HT trait going undetected (how many farmers routinely test for herbicide tolerance?) until a large portion of his crops are GM, or who perhaps gave the engineered seed a trial run one year then next growing season changed his mind only to find that the persistant stuff keeps coming back effectively putting him in violation, etc.
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For anyone who has an hour, this is an excellent U of WA lecture on GMFs with some surprising examples of what many of our food crops began as.

Genetically Engineered Food: The Science Behind the Controversy
Food plants modified by genetic engineering have been hailed by some as a technological marvel that will provide food security for the world's hungry, while being demonized by others as a serious threat to human health, a danger to the environment, and an economic weapon to increase the corporate control of agriculture. How does genetic engineering differ from traditionally accepted practices in crop breeding? Does genetic engineering of plants involve an unnatural breach of species boundaries? Do genetically engineered crops pose unique risks?
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Personally, it does concern me when viruses are used to insert genes like those that result in cows producing insulin in their milk. I realize the potential from some virus to escape and/or turn into a new disease such as an infection that causes your body to produce insulin (and thus kill you) is extremely remote, the viruses used are rendered incapable of spreading, yadda yadda. But we know from experience that genes are exchanged among unrelated organisms and there have been many technologies in the past that appeared harmless but weren't.

The risk is remote and the benefits are probably worth it. But I do hope the technology stays at the highest level of research and doesn't become so common place that every fly by night producer can start experimenting with the technology. That's a ways off, but not inconceivable.
 
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A virus would be the least of my problems, because of how viruses work. They need to bind to very specific proteins to even activate, much less to then spread. (See for example why bird flu could be transmitted bird to human, but almost never human to human.) Even inside the body, it is routinely the case that a few cells are attacked by the virus, but the others are effectively off limits.

So the chances of getting an epidemic out of a virus that specifically targets specific cels in a specific animal, even after a mutation or two are likely to be very slim.

In the case of GM plants, well, that's probably even less of a worry. Viruses that can get through a plant's cellulose walls have very specialized capsids, and pretty much can't attack anything else. Ditto for viruses which prey on bacteria, btw. But that's probably ok because we don't use viruses to modify plants.

We use bacteria and, well, I already ranted about that in this thread :p
 
roger said:
If you want an argument about how people should use language colloquially, the windmill is over that-a-way.
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Right, because everyone agrees that "downloading" means - to upload something

Go email your ISP and ask them why they advertise both an upload and download speed when in fact they are the same thing. Please paste their response here
 
The fact is that people settle lawsuits often due to the fact that even in a situation where the plaintiff has no case fighting the suit will bancrupt you and there is definitly a class of parasite lawyer that has no compunction about doing this and taking a settlement for the low costs of filing. That's why I protect myself with a pre-paid legal service.
 
Francois2807 said:
The fact is that people settle lawsuits often due to the fact that even in a situation where the plaintiff has no case fighting the suit will bancrupt you and there is definitly a class of parasite lawyer that has no compunction about doing this and taking a settlement for the low costs of filing. That's why I protect myself with a pre-paid legal service.
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As an aside, watch out for those prepaid services: http://www.essortment.com/lifestyle/commonfraudpre_skkg.htm

But that's another troubling aspect about this. Who knows what these settlement terms are. Say I do something that costs a company $10K. Surely they deserve compensation. Then they come to me and say "settle for $250,000, or we will take you to court and ride you until you are destitute, and you know we've already done that to others." What choice do you realistically have but to settle? Sure, you shouldn't have broken the law in the first place, but should you really have to face endlessly deep pockets types of litigation for a rather small mistake?
 
I find it surprising that noone has mentioned Monsanto's involvement in the production of PCBs and related spillages.
 
geirka said:
I find it surprising that noone has mentioned Monsanto's involvement in the production of PCBs and related spillages.
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I did, very tangentally. I didn't go into it because I don't know much about it myself and don't know how much to trust these second hand articles.
 
Does anyone really think the world would be a better place if everything to do with Monsanto was destroyed? Seems to me there are always some good aspects to these megacompanies even if you need to watch them.
 
Travis said:
Does anyone really think the world would be a better place if everything to do with Monsanto was destroyed? Seems to me there are always some good aspects to these megacompanies even if you need to watch them.
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Depends if you mean destroyed as in "all their assets, technology, and products vanish from the face of the Earth" or destroyed as in "broken into smaller, less powerful pieces"
 
pipelineaudio said:
Right, because everyone agrees that "downloading" means - to upload something

Go email your ISP and ask them why they advertise both an upload and download speed when in fact they are the same thing. Please paste their response here
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Are you saying that you really didn't understand that what Roger meant was that if you use a bittorrent program "just to download" then you are also guilty of uploading as well because that's how the technology works. But the lawsuits assume that if you've got downloaded music on your hard drive then you must have, therefore, uploaded it at some point. Otherwise, how can they tell what you upped?

Also, are you saying that the RIAA doesn't care about downloading music from blog sites?

OnTopic: How can Monsanto tell whether a farmer is planting seed that they purchased or seed that they "saved." It seems like you're allowed to buy the seed, but you're not allowed to plant it. If they catch you planting it, you're done. What are you supposed to do with it, anyway?
 
Psi Baba said:
OnTopic: How can Monsanto tell whether a farmer is planting seed that they purchased or seed that they "saved." It seems like you're allowed to buy the seed, but you're not allowed to plant it. If they catch you planting it, you're done. What are you supposed to do with it, anyway?
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I'm not sure on the particulars. I don't know if there is a seasonal restriction (i.e. plant in '09 what you bought in '09). But basically they try to force farmers, under abusive threats, to sign documents giving them full access to all of the farmer's records. They then look for documentation that you bought the seed from them. No proof, and you can guess how it goes from there.
 
Why is Monsanto so hated for selling to people with monopoly right what they already had for (nearly) free?

Hmm, a group of businessmen could buy all major forests in the world, and then start charging people for the right to breathe. Wouldn't they be hated?
 
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