Jim Shipman Of Outlaw Press Still Actively Committing Evil Acts

I tell you what, he’s like a cockroach – you can’t kill him, he just pops back up somewhere else.  Jim Shipman of Outlaw Press is just not giving up on his multipronged attack to steal intellectual property associated with the Tunnels & Trolls game.  For those not keeping track in all these previous articles:

• Outlaw Press, aka Jim Shipman, Is A Big Crook
• Outlaw Press Thieving Update
• Outlaw Press/Jim Shipman Sinks To Demented, Pathetic New Lows In Art Theft Scandal
• Further Jim Shipman Warnings, Sigh
• Would Someone Just Please Shoot Jim Shipman In the Head And Get It All Over With?

The summary is that first, Shipman stole art from over fifty artists and put it in his publications, often as the cover picture, without permission, recompense, or credit.  It was art theft on a huge scale. Of course, the legal system works great to protect the IP rights of a big company, but for a bunch of solo artists spread across the world, it does both jack and shit.

That would be bad enough, but from there he branched out – ripping people off with eBay fraud as “hobbit_king,” “selling 4u_2,” “jimship1,” “actionseller99” and other aliases, publishing books he doesn’t have the right to (including a 6th edition of Tunnels & Trolls he claims is authorized but the actual owners of T&T say is not), and even trying to impersonate Ken St. Andre on this blog and other locations to slander some of the artists involved in the initial art theft case.

And now where does he show up?  Vandalizing the Tunnels & Trolls Wikipedia article.  Here’s an email from a sharp eyed informant of the Geek’s:

Greetings,

Just thought I’d drop you a line and let you know that the IP address you mentioned back in January as possibly belonging to Jim Shipman has cropped up again on Wikipedia, where an anonymous poster has been repeatedly vandalizing the Tunnels and Trolls article.  (Would it surprise you terribly much to learn that the vandalism has taken the form of ad hominem attacks against Ken St. Andre and inserting multiple references concerning Jim Shipman’s great contributions to the game?)

Your article was referenced on the discussion page, so I thought you might like to know.

Sure enough, the Wikipedia editors were concerned about some edits to the T&T page there.  Someone seemed to be putting “Outlaw Press” in everywhere, breaking links to other legitimate T&T sites, and other such things as described on the Wikipedia discussion page.

Luckily, someone must have done some Googling – because they came across my article about Shipman posing as Ken St. Andre along with the IP address range he was using – 4.59.106.X – and discovered that the odd editor was coming from the same address range!  The obvious conclusion is that Shipman is now into Wikipedia defacement in his bizarrely never-ending quest to rip off everything and everyone even vaguely connected with Tunnels & Trolls.

It makes me happy that the work I’ve done to catalog this wretch’s misdeeds is helping other people identify who’s behind each next scam.

So to sum up your action items:

• Avoid Outlaw Press like the plague
• Avoid Jim Shipman like the plague
• Be careful buying T&T stuff (especially “collector’s items”) on eBay/the Internet, make sure it’s not a scam
• Keep an eye out for IP address range 4.59.106.0-255 in forums, blogs, and what have you because it’s Shipman acting up
• Try to change the laws of your city and/or country to actually protect people being victimized in this way without them needing thousands of dollars for lawyers
• Violate Jim Shipman with a plunger (obvious exception to the second bullet above).