Here's a blog on these types of publishing companies. Both Alphascript and
Betascript, are VDM Publishing:

http://www.chrisrand.com/blog/index.php/2010/02/27/odd-tale-alphascri...

Its mostly legal, but clearly these people have no ethical or moral values.
Publishing things from the public domain, and charging a lot of money for
it. I could see it, if they did it as a service, and charged a nominal fee.
But as the article mentioned, no humans seem to be actually involved in
compiling the data. Some "bot" just vacuums in some Wikipedia verb-age, and
craps out a book. That's probably also farmed out to some
"publishing-on-demand" service, of which there a few on the net. They also
sell thru Amazon, and other such vendors. The blog author fails to mention,
that Amazon, also works as a broker, so most of its wares, it doesn't even
stock. Amazon in most cases works more like eBay, but the identity of the
seller, is more obscure, than it is on eBay.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Print_on_demand
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VDM_Publishing

Start your own Amazon store, and sell used unwashed hankies:

http://webstore.amazon.com/?ld=SEWBGSRCH-3785&s_kwcid=TC|12902|amazon%20stores||S|e|21826358036

There is a lawsuit pending, though the Wordpress article has been deleted.