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I'm still wondering why people think Lyle gave permission. The email trail you posted contained ZERO incidences of Alwyn asking for permission and ZERO incidences of Lyle granting permission, for anything.
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My comment on the permission is based on not only the email, but the fact that Lyle did receive a copy of the actual product, and then still continued his friendship with Alwyn. If it bugged him that much back when they were friends, why didn't he say something about it then? The falling out came much later, and suddenly it became a problem. If this is some personal issue between the two of them, it probably could have been solved pretty quickly and privately without doing damage to their careers.
I say both of their careers because obviously it does damage to Alwyn, but I don't think he realizes how much damage it does to his own. I know his schtick is to "not care" about success, but ultimately anyone who is producing some kind of material to sell needs to have customers who will buy it. This kind of negativity and public squabbling does have a negative effect on him as well. Maybe not on the 100 (or more) people who are his supporters, but the general public.
Here is where that is coming from. I have trained most of my competition in my city. So many of my former employees struck out on their own, most of the time taking MY clients with them, costing me thousands. They signed non-competes, but that didn't stop them from trying. Here's the rub... When I have gone after them all I did was sour the customers who were caught in the middle, and possibly scare off customers who witnessed some of the carnage. In the end, I spent valuable time I could have been creating new business by fighting over a few clients who I would never get back in the first place. I successfully blackballed a trainer, but I also did significant damage to myself for those who witnessed my unfiltered anger.
My policy is still on the books, and all my trainers are required to sign it, but I can tell you that I will never worry about or go after lost customers again. It's just not worth it. It may hurt them, but it hurts me worse, and it distracts me from my main mission. I was right, but it didn't really matter in the end. Not speaking necessarily for myself, but I would bet that a lot of people reading these discussions decide to avoid Lyle as well as Alwyn. I have some support for that theory, although very anecdotal.
My wife has not kept up with any of this (Erika from this board), and I haven't spoken with her about it all week. She decided to read up on everything last night and her initial reaction was, "who is that ass, Lyle? I'd never buy anything from someone that childish."
In a small community like the city I live in, if one person says something, 50 others are thinking it. If someone has something bad to say, they'll on average tell 13 people (Plummer's 1/13 rule, IHRSA). That's just in a local community. Now look at the thousands of people who are in this fitness community on the internet, stretching across multiple message boards... You can probably multiply those numbers by a factor of 1,000!
That is not to say that Lyle isn't right, but he's willing to "be right" at the expense of losing thousands of potential customers who don't know or care who Alwyn is and just see someone conducting a personal vendetta in a very ugly and public manner. It's his right to be like this if he feels he was genuinely wronged, but his recent course of action would have been very ill-advised by me personally. You don't deal with a skin cancer on your hand by lopping off your arm. That is my unqualified opinion anyway.