Ancestry.com- Shaking Your Family Tree, October 29, 1998

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Shaking Your Family Tree

October 29, 1998

Shaking Your Family Tree, by Myra Vanderpool Gormley, C.G.

HORROR ON THE WEB

by Myra Vanderpool Gormley, C.G.

(c) 1998, Los Angeles Times Syndicate

by Myra Vanderpool Gormley, CG

Many Internet genealogists are cyber thieves, plagiarists, and copyright infringers. Most of them are nice people, but there are a few bad apples in the cyber barrel.

One thief, when confronted with her crime of stealing dozens of Web pages, retaliated against the author by placing an ugly GIF (graphics image) on her home page and labeled it with the author's name. This reminds me of something a grade-school kid might do.

Some of the excuses frequently used are:

-- I thought everything on the Internet was FREE.

-- I'm looking up information for FREE. I don't charge people anything.

-- It didn't have a copyright notice on it.

-- You can't copyright facts and that's what genealogy is.

-- What code? You can't copyright URLs (Uniform Resource Locator) codes.

Information (text and graphics) on the Internet is not free. Access to it may be free, but not the intellectual property itself. And a work does not have to have a copyright notice on it -- that's one of the great myths about copyright law. In the past a notice was necessary, but in the United States, almost everything created privately and originally after April 1, 1989, is copyrighted and protected whether it has a notice or not.

Are you doing lookups for others (whether you charge or not) in books or CDs that you own? Unless you have the author's written permission, you are guilty of copyright infringement. If authors quit compiling records and writing books because of copyright infringements, what will happen to genealogy? Broderbund, one of the largest producers of genealogical CDs, clearly spells out what copyright violation of its CDs are, yet users continually infringe.

The basic facts about our ancestors -- name, birth date and place, spouse, date and place of the marriage, death date and place, -- are not copyrightable because they are facts. You can not copyright facts, ideas, concepts, principles, discoveries, titles, names, slogans, short phrases, blank forms, general topics, common plots, or themes. However, by adding any kind of narration to the basic genealogical facts gives rise to a copyright in the creative portion of the work.

While a simple pedigree chart is not copyrightable, even when filled in with facts, according to Gary B. Hoffman, a California attorney and author of Who Owns Genealogy? Cousins and Copyrights, if you add a "modicum of creativity'' you can claim copyright protection even for a pedigree chart. The same goes for computerized pedigree data, either in disk form or in a GEDCOM file.

If you submit your data to any of the popular computerized family trees, you are implicitly agreeing to allow your information to be published. Be careful -- don't include any of your cousins' creative work along with yours, or you could be liable for copyright infringement.

Web pages are creative works and thus are copyrightable. While the URLs are just facts -- like street addresses -- and cannot be copyrighted, the descriptive material, compilation, and arrangement of such links is creative work, and thus copyrightable. A favorite site of Web thieves is Cyndi's List with its more than 30,000 links to genealogical sites. Instead of stealing pages from her site, why not make links back to her Website at http://www.cyndislist.com and use the time to do some creative work, such as posting original genealogical data on the Web?

What about those clever graphics? They are under copyright also. However, many graphics artists will provide you with GIFs or JPEGs, but please read their conditions first, and follow them.

Do you know why so many genealogists are not including sources of their genealogical data on the Web? Because of cyber thieves. I am more than willing to share my genealogy, including sources, with my cousins, but I want to be asked first.

(c) 1998, Los Angeles Times Syndicate

Myra Vanderpool Gormley and Julie Case are co-editors of Missing Links, a free weekly genealogy e-zine. To subscribe, send your request to: Missing Links Newsletter

Return to Myra Vanderpool Gormley Main Page
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October 29, 1998
	HORROR ON THE WEB by Myra Vanderpool Gormley, C.G.
(c) 1998, Los Angeles Times Syndicate by Myra Vanderpool Gormley, CG Many Internet genealogists are cyber thieves, plagiarists, and copyright infringers. Most of them are nice people, but there are a few bad apples in the cyber barrel. One thief, when confronted with her crime of stealing dozens of Web pages, retaliated against the author by placing an ugly GIF (graphics image) on her home page and labeled it with the author's name. This reminds me of something a grade-school kid might do. Some of the excuses frequently used are: -- I thought everything on the Internet was FREE. -- I'm looking up information for FREE. I don't charge people anything. -- It didn't have a copyright notice on it. -- You can't copyright facts and that's what genealogy is. -- What code? You can't copyright URLs (Uniform Resource Locator) codes. Information (text and graphics) on the Internet is not free. Access to it may be free, but not the intellectual property itself. And a work does not have to have a copyright notice on it -- that's one of the great myths about copyright law. In the past a notice was necessary, but in the United States, almost everything created privately and originally after April 1, 1989, is copyrighted and protected whether it has a notice or not. Are you doing lookups for others (whether you charge or not) in books or CDs that you own? Unless you have the author's written permission, you are guilty of copyright infringement. If authors quit compiling records and writing books because of copyright infringements, what will happen to genealogy? Broderbund, one of the largest producers of genealogical CDs, clearly spells out what copyright violation of its CDs are, yet users continually infringe. The basic facts about our ancestors -- name, birth date and place, spouse, date and place of the marriage, death date and place, -- are not copyrightable because they are facts. You can not copyright facts, ideas, concepts, principles, discoveries, titles, names, slogans, short phrases, blank forms, general topics, common plots, or themes. However, by adding any kind of narration to the basic genealogical facts gives rise to a copyright in the creative portion of the work. While a simple pedigree chart is not copyrightable, even when filled in with facts, according to Gary B. Hoffman, a California attorney and author of Who Owns Genealogy? Cousins and Copyrights, if you add a "modicum of creativity'' you can claim copyright protection even for a pedigree chart. The same goes for computerized pedigree data, either in disk form or in a GEDCOM file. If you submit your data to any of the popular computerized family trees, you are implicitly agreeing to allow your information to be published. Be careful -- don't include any of your cousins' creative work along with yours, or you could be liable for copyright infringement. Web pages are creative works and thus are copyrightable. While the URLs are just facts -- like street addresses -- and cannot be copyrighted, the descriptive material, compilation, and arrangement of such links is creative work, and thus copyrightable. A favorite site of Web thieves is Cyndi's List with its more than 30,000 links to genealogical sites. Instead of stealing pages from her site, why not make links back to her Website at http://www.cyndislist.com and use the time to do some creative work, such as posting original genealogical data on the Web? What about those clever graphics? They are under copyright also. However, many graphics artists will provide you with GIFs or JPEGs, but please read their conditions first, and follow them. Do you know why so many genealogists are not including sources of their genealogical data on the Web? Because of cyber thieves. I am more than willing to share my genealogy, including sources, with my cousins, but I want to be asked first. (c) 1998, Los Angeles Times Syndicate Myra Vanderpool Gormley and Julie Case are co-editors of Missing Links, a free weekly genealogy e-zine. To subscribe, send your request to: Missing Links Newsletter Return to Myra Vanderpool Gormley Main Page Return to Columns Main Page
Copyright 1998, 1999, Ancestry.com Inc. and its subsidiaries. Terms and Conditions \| Privacy Statement