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Ancient Astrology by Tamsyn Barton-Free Download

1 by Mark
I thought people would be interested to know that Tamysn Barton's book Ancient Astrology is now available as a free PDF

Its a very interesting book and extremely well researched. The book was first published in 1994. Its quite hard to get now (and expensive!) so this pdf release is very welcome.

Link removed due to concerns that copyright may have been infringed in an unauthorized copy.

Mark
Last edited by Mark on Tue Jul 20, 2010 8:20 pm, edited 5 times in total.
As thou conversest with the heavens, so instruct and inform thy minde according to the image of Divinity William Lilly

4 by Mark
Hi Chris,

Thanks. I have removed the link. :shock:

It was put up on the History of Astronomy discussion group (HASTRO) by Garry Thompson so I assumed it had the consent of the author. A bit ironic considering Garry Thompson its so defensive of his own copyright on his own site.

Mark
As thou conversest with the heavens, so instruct and inform thy minde according to the image of Divinity William Lilly

6 by Mark
No problem. Just wanted to make sure you knew. It looks like that site is hosting a lot of works like that.
I am grateful you pointed this out. I dont want to do anything to make this site a home for pirated material!

Just goes to show. HASTRO is mostly academics so I assumed a higher standard. I guess you cant take anything for granted.

Just to let members know most of the book can be accessed via google books for free (and legally!)

http://books.google.co.uk

Mark
As thou conversest with the heavens, so instruct and inform thy minde according to the image of Divinity William Lilly

7 by Deb
In case anyone gets too flippant about the idea of copyright on the internet, I can tell you now that about a year and a half ago I had to fight off a claim for over ?12,000 submitted from a company which claimed to own copyright for a collection of small historical astrological images that I had used in some old pages of the site. My argument was that the images were taken many years ago from a clipart site, and that some of them were being made freely available by Wikopedia commons anyway. Apparently this was no excuse, since the claim was that copyrighted material gets through the net of Wikopedia Commons and is still liable if found. In the end they agreed to drop the claim entirely, after making me change all the images and accepting there was no intent, and that this site maintains itself on a minimum budget and could not cope with such commercial demands.

Copyright infrigment is one of the worst things about the internet. It happens innocently and when done deliberately some people think thay are doing a good thing ? just sharing, when in fact they are stealing. On the other hand, it seems to go by unchecked, but if you are unlucky enough to get caught up in the infringements of someone else?s rights (even indirectly or in good faith) it is really not a pleasant situation.

8 by Eddy
MarkC wrote:Just to let members know most of the book can be accessed via google books for free (and legally!)
I wouldn't be so sure about Google being legal either. Their image of harmless rascals just playing a wiz kids game by making a search engine is as wrong as considering the pirates in the Gulf of Aden to be like Errol Flynn.

Last winter Google was sued by French publishors for illegally copying books in their 'Google books'. http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/de ... ench-court
Although occasionally I also make use of the Google books or referred to it here in the forum, I always feel a bit uncomfortable with it.

Deb, I remember in a thread you said your book (Temples of the sky) was on Google books, but I'm not sure whether you were displeased by this or not. I couldn't find the thread. On the Google books page in the left under 'related books' you can see that the pages were "displayed by permission of The Wessex Astrologer". If that's not true then Google is plain lying and if you don't want your book to be there, you could contact your publisher about it and ask Google for a compensation in case Google doesn't remove it, say some ?12K or so :). Maybe others did a similar thing, for example I noticed some months ago that Holden's 'History of Horoscopic Astrology' wasn't available anymore. It's possible that they complained.

9 by handn
Glad you said that Eddy.

Useful though Googlebooks is, Google's announcement that it intended to start scanning books and publishing the scans was extremely controversial at the time.

They're quite a threatening company IMO.

Regards

H.

10 by Deb
Hi Eddy

Thanks for your comments. I'm happy with the availability of that text - mainly because I had 10 years of its publication being impeded, which meant that at one time I put most of the text up on this website anyway, just to get the information 'out there'. I had to take that down when it was republished by Wessex, but if they are happy to expose this text online, then I certainly am. It seems a fair swap to me for all the times I've made good use of the Google books service. However, I don't think I would feel the same way about a new book. I would probably be quite keen to make sure that only the previews that I personally chose were made available online.

Anyway I discussed this with Margaret Cahill who runs Wessex, and it seems to be a bit of a problem in that the only choice is between allowing no preview at all, or a really big preview. Here is what she said in an informal email respose (which she gave permission to be republished here):
Just checked on Amazon and they have a lot more! The nightmare thing about all this is that it is like unlocking Pandora's box. We could keep all the content to ourselves, but the authors and the customers want search inside - seeing as nearly all the proper bookshops have closed down - but that means releasing the entire file to Amazon. Once it's out there is no way we can stop it being used elsewhere. I think it is a case of not being able to have your cake and eat it - which is an unpopular concept these days!
I don't think there is a lot we can do in either case. The good news is that people can't actually get the whole thing. And if they need to print off 'some' pages from the book as opposed to buying it, then we probably wouldn't have had their business in the first place.
The latter comment is probably true. I do believe that if astrologers can afford to buy the book, they generally will (astrologers, as a group, simply like to own books and collect books - I realised this when I ran Ascella publications - we are really into our books). So in a way it's probably a good thing that students or astrologers in nations where it is much harder to access or buy these books, are able to get most of what they need now off the internet. But still, its a tricky problem. I think Margaret would be interested in hearing more views about this.

Regards
Deb

11 by margherita
Deb wrote: I do believe that if astrologers can afford to buy the book, they generally will (astrologers, as a group, simply like to own books and collect books - I realised this when I ran Ascella publications - we are really into our books). So in a way it's probably a good thing that students or astrologers in nations where it is much harder to access or buy these books, are able to get most of what they need now off the internet.
I would say that I generally I'm inclined to buy what I find in Googlebooks.

Moreover who reads books, tend to collect them- as you told, and Google books are difficult to print- everything can be done, I know :) - but it is time consuming, so personally I believe Googlebooks help more than damaging authors.

margherita
Traditional astrology at
http://heavenastrolabe.wordpress.com

12 by GR
I understand the concern, no one wants to be cheated, much less authors, who've been given the short end in publishing for a long time now. But, e-books are the wave of the future; Amazon recently reported that they sell about twice as many e-books as hardcovers.

Full preview if a bad idea for works not in public domain, but some sort of limited preview is, I think, analagous to being able to flip through a book at your local bookseller, and deciding whether to buy it or not.
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