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Ken Gebhart, owner of Celestaire, pointed me to a counterfeit, copyright-violating edition of Vol.1 "Selected Stars" of Pub.249 for epoch 2020. This is a straight-forward violation of Celestaire's copyright. Since I prepared and edited the original epoch 2020 volume as well as the 2015 volume, I can detail exactly how this was done.

Celestaire makes available a low-resolution pdf version of the tables for personal use with explicit copyright notices in the volume. It's not intended for printing, and it is a violation of Celestaire's copyright to print it for distribution --exactly the same as photocopying a book and re-selling it as your own. There are numerous small details including certain calculated values as well as the presentation of the data, especially intentional aesthetic choices in the 318-page main table, which are found in no other versions of these tables. The counterfeiter simply excised the copyright notices. The pages have also been re-numbered in a way which can cause confusion for any published examples and other references. Note that pure astronomical data is not protected by US copyright law, and the values in the main table are taken from US government-sourced USNO software. It is abundantly clear, 100% certain, however, that the counterfeiter used the page images from Celestaire's pdf document. Thus it's stolen property,

• The counterfeit tables are poorly reproduced from a low-resolution file, not intended for printing.
• The countefeit tables are not less expensive than the official tables published by Celestaire.
• The counterfeit tables have been modified: copyright notices deleted, pages re-numbered. They cannot be trusted for quality.
• The counterfeit tables violate copyright law.

So beware. These tables can be easily identified by the cheesy cover art featuring a USCG vessel underway. If you have purchased a copy, contact the vendor/dealer and demand a refund. If you spot copies for sale, please let me or Celestaire know so that we can work to have these counterfeits removed.

You can purchase the printed, official, high-resolution edition of the tables from Celestaire here:
https://www.celestaire.com/product/ho-249-volume-1-selected-stars-epoch-2020/. 
And note also that the epoch 2025 tables will soon be available with some modernized features and tables.

Frank Reed
Clockwork Mapping / ReedNavigation.com
Conanicut Island USA