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Quixtar
Changing Strategy to Harass |
| The Quixtar/Amway/Alticor corporations, who have long tolerated their critics
on the Internet and the critics justified use of the Fair Use provision of the
copyright law, have now apparently changed strategy and have sent their attorneys out
to bust the chops of Quixtar's critics on the Internet using this same petty legal tactic as the IBOAI and various Quixtar
groups. Since I've had this site, I have never received any communication from Amway/Quixtar concerning Amway/Quixtar/Alticor Copyrighted materials. I consider the use of Quixtar copyrighted material to be covered under Fair Use provision of the copyright law. In this respect I had always thought Quixtar/Amway/Alticor to be a pretty fair player in the free speech arena on the web. We may disagree in our opinions of the business, but the Corporation never had fallen to the petty strategy of harassing its critics with lawyers claiming copyright infringement. Well things seem to now have changed. On July 6, 2006 I received a letter James
Sobieraj Brinks Hofer attorney for Quixtar, asking me to http://img224.imageshack.us/my.php?image=amwayfounderscouncil9th.jpg Mr. Sobieraj then informed the Britt World Wide attorney, J. William Blue, about the situation with the Founder's Council page text , and Mr. Blue sent me a cease and desist letter for the text of the Founders page as well. Apparently, Britt World Wide was first complaining to Alticor about my publishing of the Founder's council photo, and wanted possibly Alticor to beat me up first. I really can't believe that Alticor would knowingly resort to such petty legal tactics over one inconsequential photograph and risk the public relations issues with looking like a legal bully. They already have egg on their face from the Scheibeler defamation suit. Why risk more bad PR as a legal bully with chasing down a stupid photograph? It is my opinion that possibly certain founding "fathers" of Quixtar, find it embarrassing that they are not members of the Quixtar Founder's council. It is my suspicion they have direct lines of contact to the Alticor legal department or Brinks Hofer and are exercising their influence to indirectly harass me, without corporate management's approval. I bet the Doug DeVos and the Public Relations managers at the corporation don't even know their legal department is engaging in such selective targeting of "copyright" issues. Brinks Hofer, the firm that wrote me, has also represented Amway when it was a defendant in one of history's largest copyright lawsuits where Amway settled for $9 million. Brinks Hofer also represented Amway in the NMPA copyright lawsuit where Amway and its distributors supposedly settled for $700,000. |
