They are not claiming copyright but have protected their work under a licence. A licence is a contract and has nothing whatsoever to do with copyright. By using the product you are agreeing to the licence terms which forbid wholesale copying and re-distribution. This is a contract and is covered by contract law not copyright. Cheers Guy Kathi Jones-Hudson wrote: > Pat's right -- "sweat of the brow" and/or "industrious > collection" are accorded no copyright protections at > all. HeritageQuest is trying to convince you not to > take 'their' scans, but if they are exact scans of the > public records rather than a real database or > extraction of those records, they have no rights at > all as far as my reading of the copyright law goes. > > Copyright requires originality and there is no > originality in scanning public domain documents. > > Kathi Jones-Hudson > MD Tombstone Transcription Project Manager > http://www.rootsweb.com/~cemetery/maryland/maryland.html > > -- Wakefield, West Yorkshire, England. http://freespace.virgin.net/guy.etchells The site that gives you facts not promises! http://anguline.co.uk/ An organisation dedicated to bring rare books on CD, at an affordable price, to the local history researcher and to the family history researcher.

Guy: According to one of the earlier emails today this is on HQ's customer service page: "While it's true that the original documents are "public domain," we have painstakingly processed the records through our proprietary enhancement systems. It is through this synthesizing process that we have generated a new product, which is fully protected by U.S. and International copyright law." So, yes they are claiming copyright on their images. According to US Copyright Law there is no 'sweat of the brow' copyright protection for your labors - only original and creative expression. Enchancing the scans doesn't change the underlying data. Kathi Jones-Hudson MD Tombstone Transcription Project Manager http://www.rootsweb.com/~cemetery/maryland/maryland.html __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com