[Ferre]

Originally Posted by James Trotta

It should. What's to stop Ebay from going after you if it sees cookie dropping coming from your forum? Sure a few things could stop them (like doing the right thing by going after the people profiting from the cookie drops) but people don't always do things for the right reasons.

Well, in this case I think they (Ebay) does go after the people who profit from the cookies. When Shawn has been giving tips to other forum owners "years ago" (as John Scott told us) on how to do this I'm also inclined to think that Shawn Hogan was very much aware of this practise and that he was the one who profited.

Originally Posted by John Scott

Some people think SEO is unethical. Some don't. To each his own.

With the difference that SEO is not a sneaky way to steal money from companies with affiliate programs. I fail to see the resemblance between common theft and search engine optimization.