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Following article posted September 24, 1999 Vol. III No. 18 
By: Myra Vanderpool Gormley, CG, rwr-editors@rootsweb.com Welding Links: Dark Side Of The Internet
It is written from perspective of a person/s living in the USA and references are to the copyright laws governing that country. Qualified persons on the subject of copyright from countries around the world are encouraged to contribute to future issues of The Global Gazette. The opinions expressed here are those of the writers, Julia M. Case and Myra Vanderpool Gormley.  I thought everything on the Internet was FREE I'm just looking up information for FREE. I don't charge people anything You can't copyright facts and that's what genealogy is Genealogy was meant to be shared This is information about my family and I'm entitled to it Reproduction of copyrighted materials was intended to keep people from distributing information for profit Authors are too greedy and should be grateful they are getting free advertising on the Web Systematically making a CD freely available to more than one person at a time Systematically make large parts of a CD's contents freely available to others Uploading all or part of a CD's contents onto an electronic bulletin board Circulating a printout taken straight off the CD Materials older than 1923 are absolutely safe. (They are in the public domain.) Relaying FACTS is OK. (This does not mean copying.) If the use of material created by someone else diminishes the market value of that person's work, then the copyright has been violated Getting written (not e-mail) permission from the author/publisher is the surest way to ensure that you are not violating copyright lawIf authors quit compiling records and writing books because of copyright infringements, what will happen to genealogy? It is true that the basic facts about your ancestors -- name, birth date and place, spouse, date and place of the marriage, death date and place, are not copyrightable. However, adding any kind of narration to the basic genealogical facts gives rise to a copyright in the creative portion of the work. See Gary B. Hoffman's article "Who Owns Genealogy? Cousins and Copyrights" www.genealogy.com/14_cpyrt.html. Does living far from genealogical repositories, having a physical limitation, being a certain age, or being in reduced circumstances entitle us to any special privileges of copying or using someone's material? Is it ever right to take anything that belongs to someone else? Would your ancestors be proud of your answers and your actions? For more information about copyright issues see: 10 Big Myths About Copyright Explained by Brad Templeton: www.templetons.com/brad//copymyths.html The United States Copyright Office: lcweb.loc.gov/copyright/ Shopping Cart & Order Desk Global Genealogy & History Shoppe 1-800-361-5168 ( 9-5 Monday to Friday )
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*The Global Gazette is a unit of GlobalGenealogy.com Inc. Copyright© 1995 - 2009 GlobalGenealogy.com Inc. All Rights Reserved |
