http://www.stellar-one.com/copyright_concepts/fundamentals_gene.htm This is a link for an article once more, explaining copyrights and genealogy by Michael Patrick Goad. It is especially interesting for those people who offer look ups from published works and/or publish web pages. Simply put; For works created before today, there are a few basic durations and conditions for determining copyright status: * If an original work of authorship was created after 1977, it's copyrighted and it's going to be for a very long time. The earliest that any work created after that will lose its copyright will be about 2049 - that's assuming that the author died right after he authored the work. This is where the Fair Use policy comes in - unless you have written permission from the author/publisher, you should not scan, copy or quote verbatim from entire pages of a genealogy, family history, etc. Even though books such as Cemetery Records would not be considered "original" by the criteria given, you should not copy full pages from these as well (w/o permission). In some cases, all you would be able to say is whether an individual is in the book and on what page(s). At most, providing listings for several specific individuals would be acceptable under the fair-use provision. 3 names would be considered within fair-use provisions. As always, the best-case scenario would be to obtain written permission from the author/publisher, in which the extent of lookups allowed is spelled out. * If it was created before 1923, there is no copyright on it any more, so long as it was published. If it wasn't published, it may still be protected by copyright. He gives examples for census records, compilations, cemetery records etc. It is an article well worth reading, especially if you are doing web pages and/or offering free look ups. Charlene Beney Coordinator for St. George, NB Parish Page http://www.rootsweb.com/~nbpstgeo/