I must agree wholeheartedly with Bob Vickers. Just because one publishes something, doesn't mean one wishes it copied without permission. If one publishes a family history book (as I did), one doesn't expect anyone to violate the copyright by extracting the database, only read the book. A copyright on a database (which I have at my own website) quite explicitly means it's a no-no to copy the database for any reason without permission, and violation would attract the same legal action to protect it as it would a book. This is not to say I don't share information - quite to the contrary - but the creator decides when and with whom. It's not just bad etiquette to copy someone else's protected work, it's illegal. See http://lcweb.loc.gov/copyright for details. Jon At 10:29 AM 3/18/98 +0000, you wrote: >On Wed, 18 Mar 1998, George W. Durman wrote: > >> Hello Bob. Not sure what you mean by "thieves". I had always >> thought that we put databases on the Web for others to search AND >> extract info from. Don't see any difference from printing out pages of >> trees and info, and getting the whole thing. Any database I post to my >> web site that comes from me is "free for the picking". Likewise to any >> databases from others that I post. They have all given their permission >> for these databases to become public domain. >> >> If I'm missing something, please let me know, >> SgtGeorge >> > >George, > >I think there are some points you are missing here: > >(1) Just because you are happy for your database to be public domain >doesn't mean that everyone else feels the same way. I have heard of people >being upset that their published family history was sold for commercial >gain without permission. > >(2) The border between viewing a page and copying it is somewhat fuzzy, >but copying data and incorporating it into your own database is definitely >a breach of copyright if done without permission. See >http://www.clari.net/brad/copymyths.html > >(3) If you do want to make your data public domain why not simply allow >people to download the original GEDCOM? This makes the HTML2GED program >superfluous, and avoids the errors likely to be introduced by the >double conversion. > >Bob >====================================================================== >Bob Vickers R.Vickers@dcs.rhbnc.ac.uk >Dept of Computer Science, Royal Holloway College, University of London >WWW: http://www.cs.rhbnc.ac.uk/home/bobv >Phone: +44 1784 443691 > > ______________________________ | | | EMQUAD International, Ltd. | | P.O. Box 60 | | Great Neck, NY 11022 | | - | | emquad@worldnet.att.net | | http://home.att.net/~emquad | | - | | Consulting Division | | Publishing Division | |______________________________|