From a while back…
Note: I’m not a lawyer and I don’t play one on the Internet. Seek legal counsel if you have serious copyright issues you wish to pursue legally–but remember–it ain’t cheap.
I realize that they are “your” ancestors and you probably have some emotional attachment to them. That’s perfectly normal.
You may also have some emotional attachment to facts that have taken you a long time, some money, and a great deal of time to ascertain. Let’s say that you “discover” that Johann Schmitpluffer was born on 12 August 1739 in Gottareallylongschmirkingname, Germany, the son of Erasmus and Anna (Umlautholder) Schmitpluffer.
You decide put those facts online, perhaps including your analysis along with those facts. It is a very long and detailed analysis, reflecting your research and your own creative way of writing up the analysis. Creative here meaning that your prose is eloquent, engaging and keeps the reader on the edge of her seat. We do not mean “creative” in the sense that you made it all up.
Your distant cousin from Bangor decides to use the fact that Johann Schmitpluffer was born on 12 August 1739 in Gottareallyloneschmirkingname, Germany, the son of Erasmus and Anna (Umlautholder) Schmitpluffer in his genealogy database, his blog etc.
Oh, your “taters are irked.” You fly off a nasty email–it is not eloquent and it is not engaging. He has used “your” information and he needs to pull it.
Sorry, it’s not your information. It is a fact and you have no more right to use that fact than anyone else.
Your distant cousin from Seattle decides to copy all your eloquent, engaging prose and use it in its entirety in her own material. The Seattle relative does not give you one whit of credit. That’s a problem and that’s a violation of your copyright because your paragraphs of writing were used. Whether you can get the Seattle resident to remove their material or cease from using it is another story. You can try and convince them nicely to remove the paragraphs of your writing, but they may choose not to. Enforcing your copyright may not be easy and if you decide to hire lawyers it certainly isn’t cheap. You may contact the ISP or the web host that houses the information and prove that the prose is yours. You may get lucky and they may remove it.
And if your cousin in Seattle removes the prose and replaces it with:
Johann Schmitpluffer was born on 12 August 1739 in Gottareallyloneschmirkingname, Germany, the son of Erasmus and Anna (Umlautholder) Schmitpluffer.
There’s not a lot you can do.
4 Responses
Sadly, I know several people who refuse to post their information – including photographs and documents available nowhere else – because other people have taken their work and posted it without giving credit. Everyone loses in this scenario, especially when the original owner dies and their collection is tossed and lost forever.
A dozen years ago, a distant cousin sent me the text to a song his nephew had written prior to the young man’s passing from leukemia. The song was performed at the young man’s funeral service, and so I attached a copy to the nephew’s entry on my tree at the A company.
Several years later, the young man’s sister contacted me demanding to know how I came to receive the lyrics, and insisting that, as she retained copyright to the lyrics, I needed to remove them. I countered with the usual blather about “fair use” etc. only to be served with an email from the admins at A stating that use of anything copyrighted would be grounds for the deletion of my tree, (“fair use” be damned, lol) — so of course I immediately complied. Not worth the trouble where A’s terms of service are concerned!
I’m no lawyer, but I’m not certain posting them in a tree entry for the person constituted fair use, particularly since the entire song was posted.
Well, back to the “cite your sources” chant.
When I post something (proven or not) I cite the source I used. Sometimes the “source of the source” also. This has nothing to do with copyright. As you noted, you can’t copyright facts.
I have found these same bits of information, with no citation (to me or to my source) listed on various of the more common trees on the internet. I have been known to contact these cousins, to no avail, sorry to say.
To me it’s not a legal issue, it’s an issue of integrity.