Hi everyone! I wanted to pass along an incident which occurred on the Buckingham County mailing list. A person offering lookups from a book he purchased was contacted by the publisher specifically Hearthstone Books and told not to perform lookups as this was a violation of the copyright laws. Has anyone been contacted concerning lookups? We do quite a few lookups for people from books we've purchased and I'd like to know what everyone thinks about the above incident. I just checked the Buckingham mailing list again and the following msg was there: I think a lot of people are unaware that RootsWeb instituted a new Acceptable Use Policy effective June 16, 1999. It addresses the issue of copyrighted material on RootsWeb lists very explicitly. To review the AUP in its entirety go to http://www.rootsweb.com/rootsweb/aup.html I'll post the first five points here. Items 4 and 5 deal directly with the issue of postings from published, copyrighted sources. ROOTSWEB'S COMMON-SENSE ACCEPTABLE USE POLICY by Dr. Brian Leverich RootsWeb exists to allow you to interact with other people who share your interests. We also often preserve those interactions, so you can readily see and learn from discussions that have occurred in the past. To be able to provide you with the best possible environment, we ask you to agree to the following before using our facilities: 1. HAVE FUN. Well, we can't require you to have fun, but we really think you should. 2. YOU OWN YOUR POSTS. When you post messages to lists, message boards, and other facilities at RootsWeb, those posts remain your property under copyright law. 3. ROOTSWEB MAY ARCHIVE AND REDISTRIBUTE. So we can provide current and future users with access to your posts, by posting here you do give RootsWeb a permanent license to archive and redistribute those posts. This policy may be superseded in specific circumstances by other commitments made by RootsWeb. 4. POST ONLY MATERIAL YOU DO OWN. When you post to RootsWeb, you must either be the copyright holder (that basically means you wrote it), have written permission from the copyright holder, or the material must clearly be in the public domain. 5. YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR POSTS. If you post anything that results in RootsWeb being sued, you are responsible for any costs you incur. We may also hold you responsible for any costs we incur defending ourselves. Well, I guess that's the answer. Has anyone been contacted before by publishers about lookups? LAP __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Bid and sell for free at http://auctions.yahoo.com