

Colon cleaning company sues WordPress - shrikant
http://insulaindoielii.wordpress.com/2012/10/11/colon-help-sues-wordpress/

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jredwards
Maybe it's just me, but I'm a little bothered by the fact that most of the
comments have a flavor somewhere between 'meh' and castigating the author for
various missteps.

Can we all at least agree that pseudoscience is bad and litigious
pseudoscience is very bad?

~~~
eranation
Yes. Sell fraud products and sue people saying it's fraud backed by evidence
is bad. almost as bad as patenting prior art, not doing anything with it, and
suing people who actually make something useful with it. same type of people
we should export to a remote island to sue each other.

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josscrowcroft
Great article but somebody should change the title to remove the
sensationalist "...to try and deny reality" - the story is interesting enough
on its own merits without the personal touch IMHO..

~~~
gte910h
While I agree the title of the original article should be changed, I like my
HN titles generally the same as the article.

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instakill
Looks like deceitful "health" products are getting a taste for suing online
critics. Here's a similar case in South Africa about another type of "health"
company. [http://www.quackdown.info/article/quack-company-litigates-
ag...](http://www.quackdown.info/article/quack-company-litigates-against-its-
critics/)

~~~
mark_integerdsv
Article mentions the TAC, real heroes of the struggle against the ANC
governments struggle against science in the war against HIV/AIDS.

More here:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthias_Rath#Illegal_AIDS_tria...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthias_Rath#Illegal_AIDS_trials_in_South_Africa)

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ktizo
Matthias Rath is a horrible piece of work. I recommend everyone to read the
chapter of Bad Science that Matthias tried to have buried -
[http://www.badscience.net/2009/04/matthias-rath-steal-
this-c...](http://www.badscience.net/2009/04/matthias-rath-steal-this-
chapter/)

~~~
mark_integerdsv
Too damn right.

Also this chapter coincided with our then president Thabo Mbeki making
typically over-academic assertions that HIV does not cuase aids and our then
health minister fuckface Tshablala Msimang (she of the stolen liver) telling
AIDS sufferers to eat bearoot and garlic.

Evil compounded.

Please forgive my rant. I am a proud South African sickened by the suffering
our people have been subjected to.

~~~
ktizo
No worries at all. It is one thing for someone to be a true believer however
misled, but I am convinced from looking into this that Rath knows damn well
what he is doing and is playing the piper for something far worse than mere
greed. The trouble is, he is also damn good at it and manages to feed many
folk exactly what they want to hear.

Everyone loves to be in on ' _how the world really works'_ TM.

And as far as I can tell, the military-entertainment-pharma-tourism-complex,
or whatever it is this week, is hardly doing itself many favours in not making
people in the poorer bits of the world utterly paranoid and suspect everything
of being some massive trick. I mean, people there have to put up with repeated
nestle marketing campaigns to discourage breastfeeding when there's fuck-all
clean water[1]. At least here in the UK they just try to addict us to sugar
and drugs instead.

And that's not in some old colonial past, that kind of shit happens today. I
mean, when you have stuff like the CIA faking an immunisation program in
Pakistan to sample for DNA[2] while looking for Ernst Stavro Blofeld or
whatever, then no wonder some people believe in Mattias Rath. And their fear
makes him a lot of money.

[1] still going on in 2011 - [http://www.irinnews.org/Report/93040/LAOS-NGOs-
flay-Nestl%C3...](http://www.irinnews.org/Report/93040/LAOS-NGOs-flay-
Nestl%C3%A9-s-infant-formula-strategy)

[2] [http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/05/pakistan-polio-
fak...](http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/05/pakistan-polio-fake-cia/)

[edit] Oh, and I'd completely agree that Mbeki & Msimang do appear to be
completely and utterly cynical power-crazy bastards.

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eranation
This is the kind of company that if they weren't in the colon business, they
would have been patent trolling.

~~~
noonespecial
And if not for trolling, riding around in rusty Toyotas with ak47s demanding
"tributes" from villiagers. It's encouraging that we've managed to confine
them to the courtroom, but discouraging that we haven't been able to outgrow
them altogether.

------
cft
The company in question is located in Romania
<http://www.zenyth.com/contact.html>

Did they sue in an American court?

~~~
atheistbastard
No, it's a Romanian court. Don't know if Wordpress will actually oblige the
C&D if it comes

~~~
rorrr
They are in Romania, why would you even care about their silly threats? Repost
the article all over the internet, inter-link, and your links will show up
first in the search engines.

~~~
atheistbastard
I'm in Romania too. The original blogpost criticizing their product is third
in Google search results when looking for "colon help" (at least if you are in
RO)

Anyway, no big deal yet as I'm remaining anonymous and I'm sure Automatic Inc
will be fine, however the principle of the thing is bothering me. They already
stoped proper criticism because the person had a domain and a whois search
gave his name and address away.

I don't plan on stopping and will continue to critique products which are
bulshit naming them on purpose.

I already did this with Power Balance (5-th in results) and they did not sue
or react much.

This is a big company though, they sold over 200.000 products at 35$ a piece
(this is a lot in Romania)

~~~
alexsb92
Checked Google.ca. For Colon Help your blog from July of Last year is 5th. The
first couple are theirs. And the 4th one is irrelevant; it's about
semicolon's.

It's quite shitty that after all this time Romania is still such a piece of
work. Every month or so I read up on more stuff regarding it, and thank my
folks for coming to Canada 6 years ago.

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rpsw
I know it's in the original title, but calling them a "colon cleaning company"
makes it should like they clean your colon as a service, rather than providing
a good purporting to do that.

Or is it just me?

Would be similar to calling Procter & Gamble a cleaning company because they
sell cleaning agents.

~~~
erifneerg
The author was criticizing their colon cleaning product. My guess is he
assumes most people outside of Romania have not heard of the company's name.

It does bug me that he never mentioned them directly by name in this post.

~~~
Jach
Did we read the same post?

> The company name is Zenyth Pharmaceuticals

> Their main brand and product is ColonHelp.

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gm
Personal army type of stuff?

And yeah "Deny reality" is simply link bait. Everyone claims they have reality
on their side. That's why lawyers exist, and so on. Not much news here, IMO,
just one more lawsuit where both sides allege they have been harmed by the
other.

~~~
jlgreco
You are entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts.

Despite the fact that everyone thinks they are right, there are in fact people
in this world who _are_ right, and those who _are_ wrong. The system that we
have developed to ascertain where the truth lies is not the law, but rather
science.

~~~
illuminate
[http://theconversation.edu.au/no-youre-not-entitled-to-
your-...](http://theconversation.edu.au/no-youre-not-entitled-to-your-
opinion-9978) A further opinion on the subject.

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pjnewton
I think this whole article (and the other stories I've read like it) is best
summed up by the last sentence: "In other news, pencil company gets sued
because someone writes angry letters using pencils"

~~~
xsmasher
Not by half. More like "bookstore gets sued for selling defaming material;"
the posts were hosted on wordpress.com.

The lawsuit is asking Wordpress to take down the posts or the blog, which is
well within Wordpress' power.

~~~
MartinCron
Serious question: Let's say for a moment that this is akin to defamation. Why
would it be Wordpress' legal responsibility to take down the posts or the blog
and not the person who posted them? It seems that holding Wordpress
responsible for what their users say is a burdensome and dangerous notion.

~~~
xsmasher
The blogger put the post up on Wordpress.com. It now resides on a server
wholly owned by Wordpress, which is serving up the blog to the entire world.

I'm trying to avoid making a third analogy, because analogy usually takes you
further from the specifics, but apparently I can't help it: It's analogous to
suing YouTube when a user uploads copyrighted content. What is YouTube's
responsibility to stop serving up the "illegal" content? Or a mail host's
responsibility to stop customers from sending spam?

Hosts can not wash their hands of the content that they're sending out just
because it was user-generated.

~~~
pjnewton
I think you may have been better off not making the third analogy... Because
now I want to ask: So republishing copyrighted material and posting a scathing
review are in the same 'illegal' class?

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xsmasher
That's the problem with analogy - it moves the conversation off the topic and
onto the fit and fitness of the analogy. I should have thought of something
with cars.

My point was not that both crimes were equivalent. My point was that "a user
did it!" is not a defense against lawsuits.

~~~
pjnewton
Yeah I agree, that is definitely no defense. I just don't know if I would even
consider a lawsuit like this valid. But I'm not a lawyer nor am I in Romania
so I'm speaking completely from opinion.

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Monotoko
Well, that just stinks (I shall escort myself back to reddit)

