Yesterday, after seeing that FutureAD was once again posting links to his figurines, I banned him for life (well, 100 years). Contrary to his claims on Facebook, he is just banned from posting; he can still see his previous posts, his previous penalties, boardmails, etc. I did not "delete his account".
So, here are the facts, as I'm aware of them:
- His first warning was on July 6th, 2005. He was told he could use the Classifieds section (which existed way back then).
- He continued to post them (starting on July 7th, 2005), posting 2 more in 2005, and 1 each in 2006 and 2007. They were infrequent enough that I missed them.
- He posted 5 more in the first part of 2008, after which we received a trademark infringement notice from the U of U, which we passed on to him. That infringement notice included a link to one of his posts, which was the first I'd noticed that he'd continued doing it. He received a penalty at that time for continuing to sell them.
- He often included mentions of selling them on eBay, or having been commissioned to make them.
- He took 2009 off, then posted a couple more in 2010, with the mention that BYU had threatened litigation, so he was claiming that they weren't "for sale", even though in the same posts he mentioned having been commissioned to make them.
- In 2011, he posted one (that he mentioned was on eBay) of a former BYU player in an NFL uniform, since "BYU can't sue me" for that. This wasn't the only one that he offered for sale because "BYU can't sue me".
- He told the mods that he'd been contacted by NCAA Licensing (on behalf of BYU) about his figurines. I have previously stated that BYU contacted us directly, but I can't find any evidence of that. All I can find is that FutureAD told us that BYU had contacted him (through NCAA Licensing). It's possible that they contacted me directly as well, but I can't find it, so I'll presume that I remembered that bit wrong.
- During this time, I admit that I was aware that he was occasionally posting the pictures, but I was under the impression that he wasn't offering them for sale. When I reviewed the threads, it was clear that I was wrong. He usually didn't mention in in the OP of the thread, but often mentioned it later in the thread.
- Since he started selling them, he's started 51 threads on CougarBoard. Of those, 46 were about his figurines, and 3 of the 5 non-figurine posts were a decade ago.
- In May 2014, it was brought to my attention that he was offering to sell them, despite always claiming that he doesn't sell them. He received another penalty at that point. In the appeal thread, we explained our concerns to him, and he said, "Fine - I won't post anymore - no big deal."
- He then posted them 3 times in June, and once each in July, October, and December, plus a couple more times in 2015 and the one post in 2016 that was the next time I was aware of him doing it again. In several of those threads, he discussed either making them for "customers", or how one could find them for sale.
So yes, we did let him post them for many years, because he told us that he was not offering them for sale. He said he was making them as "gifts". In May 2014, I was made aware that this was not entirely true, and we asked him to stop even posting the pictures, which he agreed to do, and then posted them anyway, almost immediately thereafter.
When deciding what to do this last time, I looked more completely at his posting history than I ever have before. It became clear that he was deliberately flouting the law, as well as CougarBoard rules. We'd asked him to stop several times, and he continued to post them. His main purpose in posting on CB seemed to be to show off his figurines (which he continues to sell, despite legal threats), and he has shown no inclination to stop doing so.
We don't wish to be part of this kind of blatant commercial trademark infringement, whether we would be liable or not, and so the only choice we seemed to have was to ban him from posting them anymore, since his promises to stop doing so were always so quickly ignored.
If you enjoy seeing his figurines, follow him on Facebook.