Group, Below is an important message. Our list was spared from the spamming discussed but I wanted everyone to be aware of the situation. Just as spammers destroyed the family lists set up through MAISER a few months ago, someone else is sending advertisements and causing problems on the various surname lists currently run through ROOTSWEB. (Rootsweb has approximately 1500 different surname lists.) All the various genealogy programs offered through Rootsweb http://www.rootsweb.com/roots-l/ are legitimate (and most of these are free). Also, John Fuller's information is legitimate. (He is co-author of Genealogy Resources on the Internet.) But I cannot endorse Genforum because of the following message and other messages which I have recently received. Cliff Shaw seems to want people to send in GEDCOMS and other information which one day he will sell to others at a profit. As an effort to prevent such spamming, I have asked Rootsweb to close our surname list so that only persons who have subscribed to a list will be able to send messages to the list. Hopefully this will prevent some outside Spammer from posting unwanted messages. The procedure for subscribing to the Bond List and for posting messages still remains the same. It just means that only subscribed members will be able to post messages. I hope this is clear. Thanks, Glenn Gohr (Bond List Manager) ggohr01@mail.orion.org PLEASE READ: --------------------------- <forward> The Genforum genealogy site is currently having a legal dispute with rootsweb over copyright infringement. Cliff Shaw seems to think that anything that he can find on the internet is free for the taking, just remove the copyright information. Genforum is run by Cliff Shaw. There has been a lot of discussion lately on the listowners mailing list about GenForum. Basically, the "GenForum Staff" is alleged to have plagiarized the web pages of John Fuller "http://users.aol.com/johnf14246/gen_mail.html" to develop the GenForum web site. At the time GenForum site went on the web, there was significant evidence to their "theft" on the GenForum web site. The proof was that virtually every surname from John's site was listed on GenForum, including all of the variations or lack of variations as listed at John's site. This includes the variation of SHOCKEY that I gave John permission to use and leaves out similar but unrelated names such as SCHOCKEY and SHOCKLEY. This Cliff Shaw removes any postings that mention how to subscribe to mailing lists for surname or county/state mailing lists. He contacts your ISP and asks that they stop providing service to you for your using of profanity if you use either the words "mailing list" or "RootsWeb" in any postings made at Genforum. Overnight, Genforum SPAMMED the RootsWeb servers causing them to be shut down for repairs and the loss or delay in many postings to over 1000 lists. I sincerely hope that he loses the legal battles that he is facing. Theft of copyrighted materials will ruin genealogy on the internet if not stopped quickly. Les ------ Les Shockey email address = lshockey@emwv.com RootsWeb Listowner for the SHOCKEY family discussion group.