>>From: "J. Douglas Park" <jdpark@acd.net> The point, which must not be lost, is the Greene Co. Hist Society does not have the right (via copyright) to claim ownership of transcribed material that Michael Brown placed on the web and the rest of us worked to update/correct/amend. The listing was a simple spreadsheet of the deceased, the cemetery name and, on occasion, a note (e.g. family relationship). Under U.S. copyright law, none of this simplistic material can be claimed as proprietary or provincial. The Greene Co. Hist Society should do the honorable thing and return the material to the the web site since this was just a terrible misunderstanding which, if perpetuated, >>will injure the contributors, the users and the web site. THIS is the issue, thank you, Doug... and, under the law, I doubt the Greene County Historical Society has any standing as to copyright, at least as I understand it. However, more important than that to my way of thinking is the purpose of Historical and Genealogical societies in general. History and Genealogy are inextricably linked and one is incomplete without the other. The more that is known about the people who settled and made the history the more the history, and the current status of an area, can be understood. Those of us whose ancestry is linked to Greene County, AR. are just as much a product of its history as are those who still live there. From some of the Greene County Cemetery listings that were on line I was able to confirm the names of men from my family who settled and stayed there, fought in the Civil War from Greene Co., who came home.... who probably didn't. As a result, a couple of months ago when I happened into possession of letters written home by one of these men I transcribed them for the Arkansas Civil War pages. Without those cemetery records I could not have been so certain where those letters belonged. Now, the letters are there for ANYONE to use and a bit of history has been added. What the Greene County Historical Society has to decide is whether they are simply interested in digging up facts to keep to themselves or really out to weave the rich tapestry of the history of Greene County into a cohesive whole that enriches all of us. Legalities aside.. Doug is right.. it's time for them to do the honorable thing with the knowledge that everyone benefits from it, including the Historical Society itself. Joeline R. Webber