Posted on 10/13/2007 3:29:18 AM PDT by Mr. Brightside
Amway sues to ID bloggers
Saturday, October 13, 2007
By Chris Knape
The Grand Rapids Press
GRAND HAVEN -- The case could be called Amway versus the Internet, or some might argue, Amway versus free speech.
The Ada Township-based multi-level marketing giant this week filed a sweeping suit in Ottawa County Circuit Court against 30 people classified as John Does for disparaging the company in blogs, online forums and YouTube videos.
The suit, filed by Quixtar, the online version of Alticor Inc.'s Amway business, asks the court for an injunction and damages of more than $25,000 against the anonymous posters.
The company is planning to ask the court to approve subpoenas of companies ranging from godaddy.com to YouTube to figure out who posted the materials, said spokesman Rob Zeiger.
The company believes the videos and other postings are part of an organized effort by former distributors, including Orrin Woodward, of Grand Blanc, under court order not to disparage the company or disclose proprietary information.
"Quixtar has attempted to identify the various defendants by reviewing the offending Web sites, blogs and videos," according to the suit.
"Due to the policies of the Internet service providers, which host the various Web sites, blogs and videos, Quixtar has been unable to identify the responsible parties."
The postings referenced in the suit include videos, such as one by someone calling himself "Hooded Angry Man" where an unidentifiable man wearing a "Property of Quixtar" shirt rants about Quixtar rules and its history.
In the YouTube video "Shameus McSteeley: Quixtar vs. Meijer," a man with a fake Irish accent compares prices of products available at Meijer with much higher-priced Quixtar products.
His face isn't shown in the video.
Not all of the Web sites named in the suit seem to be run anonymously.
For instance, the blog at quixtartoday.blogspot.com outwardly purports to be produced by a man named Ed Manley, a former Amway distributor now affiliated with a competing firm.
The company said the case is not an effort to squelch individual criticism or the free speech rights of its distributors or critics, merely to flush out people associated with Woodward who might be violating a court order forbidding use of proprietary Quixtar materials and disparagement of the company.
Woodward's attorney, D.J. Poyfair, said he had not seen the case and declined to comment.
Poyfair said he is meeting with regulators to discuss the allegation Quixtar is an illegal pyramid scheme.
He also said he plans to file a case with a court-ordered arbitrator making similar allegations in an effort to help Quixtar distributors get away from the company.
If wrong, Amway will apologize
Zeiger said the company will apologize and pay any costs incurred by any of the John Does who turn out not to be tied to Woodward and his TEAM organization of distributors.
"An individual who is expressing their own opinion, we don't have a problem with that," Zeiger said. "They're not doing anything wrong.
"We think people are abusing the online dialog by doing something on someone else's (Woodward and/or other TEAM members) payroll or someone else's dime."
He said the Internet case was filed in Ottawa County so as not to slow down a pending case against Woodward and other former distributors in Kent County.
The company fired Woodward and several other prominent distributors and forbid him from using TEAM-produced sales training and motivational materials in connection with events for distributors.
This ought to be interesting.
Worked for the RIAA...
Tell me the Social Security isn’t an illigal pryamid scheme!
What are you talking about?
I posted once on this thread and it was in rgard to corporations.
Amway and Mitt? OMG.
That’s gonna leave a mark. LOL
Yep. My parents were involved in Amway in the late 1970s. It was cultish the way these Amway people swore by this company. Eventually, my parents recognized Amway for the scam it was and disassociated themselves from the organization after filling our garage with several hundred dollars worth of cleaning products.
Two decades later, I had two cousins try to sell me into the "Equinox" scam. I went to one meeting and immediately recognized it as a pyramid scheme. It was funny, they had all these Equinox "ringers" at the meeting driving fancy sports cars and wearing nice jewelry and bragging about their rags-to-riches lifestyle courtesy of Equinox. My grandfather wound up bailing out my cousins to the tune of over $10,000 by the time they had wised up to the scam.
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