Great list of new texts on the web: Coley, Culpeper, Ramesey

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Paulo Silva from Portugal has just notified me of some traditional texts he has placed on his site in pdf format. It is a fabulous list - including many valuable titles that I have not seen reproduced elsewhere on the web and that have previously been expensive to purchase. The recent additions include:

William Andrews: The Astrological Physician
John Blagrave: Introduction to Astrology
Henry Coley: Key to the Whole Art of Astrology
Nicholas Culpepper: Directory for Midwives
Nicholas Culpepper: Opus Astrologicum
John Gadbury: Nauticum Astrologicum
John Gadbury: The Doctrine of Nativities and Horary Questions
John Middleton: Philomath - Practical Astrology
John Partridge: Mikropanastron
William Ramsey: Astrology Restored
William Thrasher: Jubar Astrologicum

All have been added to the list of astrological texts available on the web that I maintain at http://www.skyscript.co.uk/texts.html - or go to Paulo?s site Astrologia Medieval. The texts are listed on his site at http://www.astrologiamedieval.com/e-Books.htm

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Wow! That is an incredible offering of traditional goodies.

I have been trying to get that Gadbury book on nativities ( in any format) for ages!

Paulo you are a star!

Mark

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New texts that have been added to the page are

William Lilly: Christian Astrology - Books I, II, III - Edition of 1659 (in english)

Claude Dariot: L'introduction au Jugement des Astres (in french)

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I believe these are my PDF's I gave as a gift to members on another list last year as I was taking my site down. I haven't given my permission for them to be put up anywhere for downloading as I used to sell them.

I know they are mine because they are password protected to prevent copying and pasting (well most of them were!)

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Hi Scorp,

I don?t understand the password issue because these files don?t appear to be password protected. Have you contacted the website owner about this? If you have concerns I think it is appropriate for you to ask where he got his files from - from the notices he sent to me, he seems to believe that he has not broken any copyrights. He has contact details on his site.

Regards
Deb

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Hi Deb

No, they're not password protected in that you can't open them only that you can't copy and paste from some of them. They were on my site last year but I decided to take the site down as I'd lost interest in horary by then and with health issues decided to call it a day but before I did I offered the books as gifts to members on the Angelicus Merlin and The Real Astrology Yahoo Groups.

I had an email from him a few weeks ago but with one thing and another I didn't get around to replying but having said that he should have waited until he heard from me first. Copyright isn't the issue - its the fact it was a gift from me that someone else thinks its ok to re-distribute regardless.

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Dear Deborah Houlding, Members of Skyscript Forum and Scorpio711,

Regarding some of the PDF books that I have on my website, I found some of them on a webpage owned by Jacqueline Vaz.

When I visited Jacqueline's webpage, the books were available for anyone who would want to download them, without any information regarding permissions or restrictions.

After some time, I visited again Jacqueline's webpage and it was taken down.

I saved some of the books that were available on Jacqueline's webpage (when it was on-line) for a long time, waiting to see if Jacqueline would put her webpage on-line again. Since that never happened, I gathered my Astrology facsimile books and placed them on my website with the purpose of sharing the knowledge in those books with the general public, without any commercial intention.

This was done with the best of my intentions, never wanting to harm anyone, especially Jacqueline Vaz.

When I placed these Public Domain Books on-line (they are very old so I think they are Public Domain), it was my intention to contact Jacqueline Vaz to inform her. However I did not have her contact.

I discovered her e-mail in the members list of The Real Astrology Group and I contacted her to inform her that I placed some of the books that she shared for free in her webpage and she never answered me until today.

From the bottom of my heart, I did not know that this issue would be such a troublesome issue, since some of these books were available for anyone that would want them.

Considering that the books were available for anyone and considering that the books are so ancient, I didn't think and I still do not think that these books are under any copyright laws.

As I state above, I uploaded the books with the sole purpose of sharing the knowledge and helping the students of Classical Astrology.

I strongly believe that my initiative to create a free access to important texts does not have a single wrong intention.

Best regards,

Paulo Silva

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Don't worry about it - its not the end of the world! I didn't think I would have to put permissions or restrictions on anything that was intended for personal use and I am sure that was on my site. I gave them away for the same reasons in the first place on those lists, not the whole world!
:'

You may leave them up but all I ask in return is anyone that is downloading them to further their knowledge of astrology make a donation to Rhiannon who has Aplastic Anaemia no matter how small, every little helps. :D

http://www.justgiving.com/mariegalvin


I hope that is ok with everyone.

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It is outrageous dear Scorpio711, and this I am telling you from the perspective of a law practitioner:


Manuscripts published with an author in the author's lifetime remain in copyright until the end of the year in which the author died + 70 years, provided the author was a national of a country forming part of the European Economic Area, or the work was first published in such a country. If this is not the case, protection will normally be 50 years after the year in which the author died, unless the country of publication also offers 70 years' protection.
So to be straight, over the content of those old works you and no one has any copyright. It?s normal to be like this.
So if for example I transcript the contents of those work and put them on my site, I am not contradicting any law, or rights. the condition is of course not to modify the work.

Of course if the scanned copies are from your original manuscript (which I doubt), or if you have a right over this images (and you must prove this), then you could claim some rights (but here we are speaking about photographic products and not the actual content of the work).