Amway sues to ID bloggers – mlive.com:
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.
Amway always was a class act, wasn’t it?
I feel bad when I criticize Amway, because West Michigan is littered with philanthropic works from the founders, which is great. But I wouldn’t want my worst enemy sucked into being one of their lowly “distributors” trying to sell products nobody wants for the benefit of the dozen people above them on the supply line, each of whose sole contribution was sucking the next one into the business. I understand that technically, legally speaking, they are not a “pyramid scheme” but the comparison is sure hard to avoid.
Amway and Blackwater. West Michigan’s sure contributed some winners to the corporate world, hasn’t it?
And if you want a Grand Unified Theory of Suck, there’s always the fact that army units are often overrun with Amway and its ilk.
It’s dodgy, because there’s no way in hell it’s o.k. by the regs for sergeants to be selling toilet paper and scouring powder to their privates, but it happens. Nobody ever hit me up while I was in, but I got calls after I got out trying to get me to set up shop, on the theory that I might have moved into virgin territory.
So, as prevalent as Amway was in the Army, it stands to reason some of the current crop of Blackwater goons shooting up Baghdad might well have been barracks Amway distributors.
Ed, don’t be surprised if you get an email from one of the DeVos family.
“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.”
Yet I know that people have received nasty emails simply for linking to a negative Amway story. (details intentionally vague here)