DS?    David Steadson or Double Standard?

I had to laugh when Steadson accused a former Amway/Quixtar executive diamond of lifting "copyrighted" material from his website.

"showed the true colours of his supposed integrity by directly taking a large portion of
my original post about this and reposting them on his website, without any attribution or
link to the source. Not only a clear violation of copyright law, but pure and simply unethical."

For one thing, how could Mr. Steadson expect to receive proper credit when he never uses his real name?  Steadson then shows his true colors and double standard when he copies materials from the diamond's site to publish on his own!  LOL.    Oh, of course Mr. Steadson mentioned the source of his lifted material was from the former Executive Diamond, but he never asked for permission to copy the material either. 

In my opinion Mr. Steadson's over-reaction is trivial, and petty.  Anyway, contrary to what Steadson would like us to believe, acknowledging the source of the copyrighted material does not substitute for obtaining permission from whom you lifted the material.  David, if you have a real problem with it, why don't you sue the Diamond for copyright infringement?  Of course if it was something really worthy of all the effort he puts into whining and crying about it on his site, Steadson would have already registered it with the copyright office, so he would have legal rights to file his law suit in the  first place. 

Either Mr. Steadson is seriously ignorant of the US copyright laws, or he chooses to ignore the Fair Use provision, which would most likely allow copying the material since it was 1) used for non-profit educational purposes 2) the original work was not being sold and had no royalty revenue stream associated with it 3) there would be no effect on the market for Mr. Steadson's writings on the subject.  

Fair Use
Section 107 contains a list of the various purposes for which the reproduction of a particular work may be considered “fair,” such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Section 107 also sets out four factors to be considered in determining whether or not a particular use is fair:

1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
2. the nature of the copyrighted work;
3. amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

The distinction between “fair use” and infringement may be unclear and not easily defined. There is no specific number of words, lines, or notes that may safely be taken without permission. Acknowledging the source of the copyrighted material does not substitute for obtaining permission.

Mr. Steadson's concern about copyrights seems to be indeed superficial, as if he really cared, numerous materials on his Amwaywiki site, which he controls, would have to be taken down until he received permission from the copyright owners.  Maybe to avoid any suspicion of hypocrisy Steadson can mention for each of the copied materials on his site, "reproduced with authorization of the copyright holder".....   Just look at all the articles and photographs on the amwaywiki webstie, which I'm pretty sure were cut and pasted from other publications.  Dexter Yager text and photo, Bill Britt text, Puryear text and photo, etc.  Just look around, maybe you will find Mr. Steadson's Amwaywiki site a wholesale clearing house for his own definition of copyright infringement and "unethical" behavior, which to me amounts to a hypocritical double standard.  

Mr. Steadson even claimed I was unethical by copying some of the ridiculous homemade videos from youtube where Amway distributors were making absurd and ridiculous claims about Amway's new Perfect Water .  Mr. Steadson also went on to agree with me that the videos were absurd, by posting on the AdaTubes corporate blog:

"This particular product continues to have some quite scientifically absurd claims about it,
but for the last several weeks IBOs have been making fools of themselves with even
more ridiculous ones - that were all provided for them on "approved website"

Mr. Steadson also posted on the Internet:

• ibofightback Says:
  April 13th, 2008 at 11:36 am

  Renshi_D, re the perfectwater videos, it’s my understanding the corp contact the leaders of those groups and successfully got virtually all the videos removed. Unfortunately well known critic Scott Larsen had by this stage shown his ethics and lack of respect for copyright law and saved and reposted them all under his own “amwaywater” account. Youtube has since disabled that account.

  There’s still a couple of IBO videos up, hopefully they’ll be removed soon.

Actually youtube only disabled the "amwaywater" account after the IBOAI complained about copyrights in the video showing the IBOA chairman promoting the ridiculous promotion stunts in a meeting where the perfect water was being promoted.  I guess the IBOA thought that a screen shot of their website was sufficient claim for a copyright complaint to youtube.   Since youtube does not have the time or desire to filter out valid claims from those having "Fair Use" privileges, they will delete anything that anyone complains about. 

It would be interesting to see Mr. Steadson produce letters of permission for the 76 videos he has posted on youtube, or the dozens of Amagrams on his amwaywiki website, and all the other material which is not his own creation.  David, how about showing us your letters of permission to copy and re-post all these materials so that we know your are not being a hypocrite? 

I guess Amway doesn't mind Steadson copying and posting the "positive" information about Amway.   When somebody posts negative truths about Amway, like in the Perfect Water videos, then somebody can complain about "copyrights" whether it is valid legal claim or not, and even if it has no commercial value from its sale to protect.    

And, last but not least Steadson has also lifted text, screen shots and images from my site, not once asking me for permission and violating his own standards of ethical behavior and copyright legality!

Is this a double standard or just standard procedure for David Steadson?

By the way, when is Steadson going to get a page on himself on Amwaywiki?    As the most outspoken Amway zealot, posting comments on numerous other websites, moderating his own comment board and running a few websites on Amway, I can not understand why there is no page on him?  He has pages on Amway's critics.    Why isn't there a page on Amway's most outspoken positive zealot?  Is this another double standard for Steadson?