Dear Thelemites;

             Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

      Update time on the Falcon vs. OTO thing. I have yet to actually
   receive the official letter of suppression, but I gave BaphoNet's
   address to the OTO on the phone last night, and thereby heard that it is
   most certainly on the way.

      When I was younger, and a bit more enthusiastic, I sold many xeroxed
   copies of a number of typescripts of books of Crowley's, such as Liber
   Aleph, The Gospel According to St. Bernard Shaw, and Atlantis. I sold
   plain xeroces of the published editions of Olla, The Equinox of the
   Gods, and others. All of this was at cost, or less. (I paid for the gas
   from the Post Office to the copy shop and back to the Post Office....)
   They were not beautifully bound, nor wonderfully printed, and as such
   drew no adulation from the book collectors, in fact quite the opposite,
   but they were very popular with Students. I saw these last as a very
   important segment of our admittedly small population, and one that was
   not going to be served, or addressed by, the expensive but much more
   well produced (and out of print) editions of 93 Publishing, Duckworth,
   Weiser, Llewellyn, Level, Dove and others. My editions also had no
   appeal to those seeking those professional editions. They only went to
   those who could not afford, but still had need for, the public domain
   information otherwise inaccessible in the more valuable form.

      I see the files on BaphoNet as much the same thing. It's no longer a
   price difference, but a basic difference in use and function. The forms
   are not really comparable. While you may try to license a piece of
   software like a book, it is not, in fact, a book. And even if it could
   be considered such, what are the actual economics here? Despite those
   who would consider a lengthy long-distance call cheaper than buying the
   book, and thereby possibly making it less likely that a person would buy
   the book, there are entirely other issues here. The files are not
   replacements for books, and most constructively serve entirely other
   purposes. Printed books are much easier to read, for pages at a time, on
   paper than on a screen, but in electronic form they are far more easily
   searched. In book form, they are transportable to any place humans are,
   and although computers are at that portability now, the readability
   question is magnified, if I may.... In book form, they are an object of
   accruing value (assuming decent handling) while in electronic form, they
   are never valuable in a mercantile sense. (at least if they are in the
   public domain and people have public access, such as I am trying to
   provide.)

      In short, I do not see the impact of my file list on their bottom
   line, and it yanks my chain to have them dictate to me what to not have
   on my board, especially when they appear to be unwilling or unable to
   provide as good or complete information. Motta would have said, perhaps,
   that they are trying to rob the world of part of what they say their
   product is, so that their half-assed product will not suffer by
   comparison, let alone that they should be troubled to incorporate the
   missing material. But Motta is dead, and they are not, and the world
   isn't changed much either way, so far as I have seen in my short and
   foolish life.

      I am therefore boycotting their editions until such time as they show
   as much regard for the dissemination of information as they presently do
   for profit. (Jes' thought I'd warn other sysops too, Falcon seems a bit
   too litigious at the moment...)

                  Love is the law, love under will.



                           Antony Wm. Iannotti
                           Sysop, Baphonet-by-the-Sea

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