Ran across this auction.  Seller list most of the books as published by Outlaw Press.  Should I assume that these products are in violation of copyrights?




** expired/removed eBay auction **

Badmike wrote in Tunnels & Trolls fakes:And he's back!!!

I felt dirty bidding on the True West RPG offered by Tadashie (authored by Shipman) even though it might be a legit photocopy.

He offers enough stuff that people who don't know his story would buy from him and think its legit.  A number of the items he has obtained the okay from authors to publish and sell (unknown to me whether the new artwork used is legit or not).  But he basically has continued on since 2009 so he must be doing well enough.  Not all of the copied images have been replaced though - his Outlaw Games logo is a character taken from The Realm comic.

I wonder what percent of his business is legit (50/50)?

It reminds me of an older story about an online business that sold eye glasses - they would basically screw over about 10% of their customers (take their money, refuse to send product, swear and threaten them if they called to complain, etc).  They were so bad that they had lots of cases on the better business bureau and lots of websites had threads complaining about them.  Since all of these credible websites had links to the glass seller, they ranked no 1 in Google search and made large profits (until ultimately exposed but this was the case that prompted Google to alter how their search engine ranked links).