Customer Reviews

The American Atlas, Expanded 5th Edition

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The owners of the copyright on this work, Atrolabe, Inc. have filed a lawsuit against the maintainers of the time zone database which is used by virtually all modern software to accurately set timezones, claiming copyright violation due to this book being used as reference material. Due to this lawsuit the database has been taken offline threatening accurate timekeeping around the world. I would strongly discourage anyone from purchasing this book so as not to reward the nearsighted and greedy behavior of Atrolabe, Inc. To be clear, the maintainers of the database reference this book specifically with publisher information and full attribution as a good source to consult for some of the data contained in the database and were rewarded for the good reference by being served a lawsuit over a usage that assuming it is even copyrightable (facts are not subject to copyright) should at least be protected under the rules of fair use.

This book may be quite useful, but the current publishers are unethical, and are attempting to hold public data hostage. This is not okay -- or, actually, legal -- I'm confidant that it'll sort out in the end, but in the meantime, avoid buying this book until the ridiculousness stops.

Do not use this book if you intend to make use of the information you read. The authors are currently litigating against those who have made reference to information in this book.

Essentially the authors are greedy, money-grabbing, selfish individuals who do not understand the legal precedent they set by attempting to sue for the copyrighted facts.

I can't believe you're suing an open source project, which uses some information from your book, which provides time-zone information for most of the worlds computing systems. This corporatisim gone wild. Be sure I will NEVER purchase anything from this company, much less this book.

This may be a useful book but the current copyright owners, a company of eight astrologists (Astrolabe, Inc), are trying to shut down permanently the most important timezone database in the world. This is highly immoral and inacceptable behaviour on their part and, thus, I can only agree with the other reviewers and hope you, dear reader, won't buy this book.

American astrologers and any astrologers reviewing charts in the United States need this book. From the smallest town on the map to the largest cities, one can easily locate the crucial information to calculate accurate natal charts. From time zone to time changes, and on to accurate latitudes and longitudes, the information is easily located and put to the task. I must say, in 14 + years of calculating charts, i've *never* been unable to locate a birth place in the United States in this text.