Amway behind ex-diamonds removing Web content

Amway behind ex-diamonds removing
critical comments about Amway from the Web.

Well my suspicions have been confirmed when I received a mail from former Amway Global Diamond and IBOAI board member, Chuck Goetschel, asking me to remove his critical statements about Amway from my website. After I asked him why he wanted his once bold statements against the "the best business opportunity in the world" removed from the web, he stated "I have voluntarily agreed with Quixtar to request the removal of my content from all blogs, sites, postings..." A few weeks earlier I received a similar letter from Randy Haugen, copying the same attorney as Goetschel did, asking me to remove his critical statements. Of course in both letters "copyrights" was mentioned.

Certainly they do own the copyrights, but the copyright grounds are dubious and puffed up at best since these former diamonds are generating no revenue from their works. That is they do not "vend" their works, for which copyright protection would be a beneficial protection. If fact they provided it free to the internet for years.

The Purpose of Copyright by Lydia Pallas Loren
This dark side, this pervasive misconception, is turning copyright into what our founding fathers tried to guard against - a tool for censorship and monopolistic oppression. This may sound extreme to some, but consider the beginnings of copyright in this country. The first Copyright Act in the United States granted only the exclusive right only to print, publish, and vend a copyrighted work, and it lasted for only fourteen years, with the possibility of a second fourteen-year term.

Amway Global is always concerned about keeping its reputation clean and pristine and in my opinion will go to almost any length to silence former high level distributors who make critical statements about the company and the business opportunity. Certainly these former successful distributors have a much higher perceived credibility than people with little experience in the business. It is no wonder that Amway would like to silence them as quickly as possible. There are only a few former high level distributors with active online content, those by Eric Scheibeler, and Bruce Anderson. Bo Short's criticisms on formerdiamond.com were removed a while back and Don Lorenzc. You can still find them on archive.org. www.formerdiamond.com Don Lorenzc

I'm sure there are even more former Amway diamond distributors who would like to speak out against the company, but they do not want to tangle with Amway's multi-million dollar legal budget. As I have learned first hand, a legal battle is not about the law, but who has the most money to fight the battle.