AUS Mirror Sites

Skip the essay, just show me the links!

In the late 1990's the authors of what were the five leading anti-Amway websites of their time were sued. Sidney was the leading Anti-Amway site, Ashley Wilkes's site had a collection of quotes from the AMO motivational tapes and a recollection by a man who was part of Dexter Yager's circle in the early seventies, Hoagland hosted the Anti-Amway and Anti-MLM Webring, Charles Midgett had a strong site of his own and Loundes talked about Amway giving a verbal promise only to have them deny the promise and persecute him for remembering it. Put together, these sites made a killer case against Amway.

So What Happened?

Hoagland's site still stands, but has been inactive for a while, and you can't even email him. Charles Midgett dropped his site as soon as he legally could. Schwartz finally gave up his site, leaving it to be mirrored. Wilkes has been so defeated that at present his URL shows no HTML on the site -- just a couple of butterfly pictures (!!) being stored in his school account. And Loundes' fight has gone into different subjects.

In 2000, Amway decided to threaten people who had mirrors of Sidney's site up. Many of these sites have since taken off their mirrors; in some cases that hasn't stopped Amway from going through with their threatened lawsuit.

Amway -- by this time now the Alticor corporation -- also sued a couple of other sites critical of Amway and the AMOs. Those lawsuits weren't nearly as successful this time, mainly because of the shift in tactics: instead of battling against the corporation, they've cooperated to a degree while refusing to remove their sites. So now Alticor has started pressuring the hosting sites, trying to get them to remove the critical sites.

More recently (Starting September 2002), Quixtar distributors have been suing the web sites on their own. It appears that Alticor has decided to let their distributors do their dirty work in an attempt to separate themselves from their (or their distributors) actions.

Amway is a corporation with millions of dollars it can use to quiet its critics. Most critics are people living on five-digit incomes who are not in a position to fight indefinitely against court orders. Even if there's thousands of people willing to fight, they can only fight so long against a corporation that spins millions daily and is able to divert some of that cash to quiet opposition. In addition, the corporation acts as one (and, in this case, is one -- it's privately owned by the same families who started it); whereas the opposition is many, disconnected, and thus dividable.

So why haven't I been attacked by Quixtar/Amway yet? I can think of four possible reasons:

  1. My site is mainly concerned with the more distant past, whether that past be in the early seventies or the early eighties. Amway can thus paste my site as "out-of-date," saying "We've changed since then."
  2. I use a "Yahoo" Email address. It is possible that Amway ordered Yahoo Mail to send them a copy of my emails and for Yahoo Mail to have complied with the court order with me having no idea that my privacy was legally disturbed.
  3. I'm not important enough for them to chase after. Like many other sites where people say one thing and then leave, I'm small enough to ignore (this differs from #1 in that for #1 they feel the need to answer, whereas for this one they don't feel the need to answer)
  4. I'm not important enough for them to chase after yet; once most of the more up-to-date (and therefore more pertinent) pages are forced off the net the corporation, now fattened off the blood of its once-vocal critics, sets its fangs and claws into me.

I keep my site up because I think the site is important. It reminds people that Amway has been this way for a long time, and that the internet isn't the first time people had known what Amway was up to.

I have copies of the AUS files in storage, ready to put up in case this list becomes thin. In the meantime, here's a listing of active mirrors sites:

Anti-Amway Mirror Site
The Pyramid Pages have this back, complete with four of the main Anti-Amway pages before Amway swooped with their lawsuits and harassment. The AUS mirror isn't the official final verison, however the AUS front page has an interesting link pointing out that Amway has become dependant on a few distributors -- probably the "black hats" everyone likes to stigmatize, I'm guessing.
Another Finnish Mirror
Not an exact mirror of the final AUS site.
Austrialian AUS mirror
An AUS mirror from Australia. Also check out the other mirrors on this page: This person just LOVES tweaking the noses of people who would shut down free speech on the internet.
Another AUS Mirror
From The Business Analysis of the Quixtar Amway Opportunity pages.
The "Amway/Alticor/Quixtar Sucks" Mirror
This guy even has three letters from an Amway lawyer on the site, complete with his ascerbic reply to each letter. Also a good selection of other items.
Robin Lionheart's Mirror
An almost exact mirror, changed only by using XHTML and CSS standards. He also writes about some troubles he has received from Consumers Union for a set of pages within the mirrored site.

There may be others. If I find them, I'll list them on this page.

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