I've been following this discussion w/ interest since it started. Just to be upfront, yeah, I'm new to this board, came to it as a user of some of Lyle McDonald's products (though not UD2.0), have been roaming the fitness/fat loss boards including stuff by Tom Venuto, Craig Ballantyne, John Berardi for a couple of years now. I have nothing against Alwyn Cosgrove, in fact would be probably using some of his stuff except that I happened across other people's stuff first. All that by way of saying, just because I just joined this forum & this is my first post on it, or that I've also posted a version of this post on bodybuilders.com, or that I've been using Lyle's products does not automatically discount what I have to say or mean that I'm an "Alwyn hater."
Okay, disclaimer dispensed with. Here's the rest:
I'm wondering if Lyle ever saw a copy of Alwyn's previous book the Rapid Fat Loss Manual (RFLM) that his edited-to-shorten version of Lyle's UD2.0 chapter was in. Because I think characterizing the RFLM chapter as a "summary" was a false characterization. From Alwyn's original email to Lyle about the chapter:
There's nothing in that email to indicate that it wasn't really a summary (which is typically in the summary writer's
own words) rather than just an edited down version of the original author's work. In fact, Alwyn wasn't even really asking for permission for anything: he was saying "I wrote a summary of your chapter for inclusion in my book, & I want to credit you for that info: what's the best way to do it?" And Lyle said, "Credit me this way."
I think if Lyle had actually
seen the "summary" back then, he'd have said, "That's not a summary, that's an edited-down (i.e., plagiarized) version of my chapter." I haven't asked him, but seems unlikely to me that he would have said, "sure, crib away, that's cool!" It's not as if he's licensed his stuff under a Creative Commons copyright scheme. And the two versions are so close that even to call Alwyn's version a "paraphrase" rather than a "summary" is more than generous, but downright inaccurate.
Furthermore, supposedly that chapter was gonna be in Afterburn II, but actually Alwyn put it in
two products back then: Afterburn II (workouts) plus the Rapid Fat Loss Manual (when he'd only mentioned the first of these two products in his original email to Lyle). Then two years later, it appeared in yet another new work.
I don't think Alwyn necessarily meant to do evil. But clearly he had a different understanding of the "agreement" he & Lyle made two years ago than Lyle did.
- Alwyn thought "summary" meant "edited version of Lyle's chapter" whereas Lyle probably thought it meant "summary" -- i.e., a rundown, but in Alwyn's own words, of the info from Lyle's UD2.0 chapter.
- Alwyn thought he had an "agreement" about use of the edited version of the chapter. Lyle thought Alwyn was seeking info on how to credit him, & provided it; there was no "agreement" per se, just info on how to credit.
- Alwyn thought this supposed agreement meant he had blanket permission to continue to use the edited-down version of the chapter into the indefinite future for other products.
In other words, Lyle
never agreed to having an edited-down version of his chapter appear in even one, much less a succession, of Alwyn's products (unless someone can produce other emails showing he did). He only responded to a request for information on how to credit him for a
summary, which is akin to asking an academic colleague how to cite a professional paper or journal article. Which is where Lyle's thinking would be likely to be, seeing as he spends a lot of time delving into scientific journals & making sure he cites info properly himself. I'm not as familiar with Alwyn's stuff, having just started looking into it a month or two ago, but I don't get that he's quite so familiar with the anal-retentive ways of doing things with citation, copyright, fair use, & all that stuff.
Not evil, maybe, but certainly naive in this area.
And if he did feel he had an "agreement" about some sort of fair use of an edited-down version of Lyle's stuff, he should have asked him again.
I also found it interesting that in his email of explanation, Alwyn makes no mention of one of the other things Lyle mentioned in his
blog about this, which was the uncredited verbatim use of Lyle's original Stubborn Fat Loss protocol (SFP 1.0) in
New Rules of Lifting & again in the Warp Speed Fat Loss book, again completely uncredited.
-- Mel