On Friday, August 31, 2007 6:49 PM MT, Bill <wmwillis@earthlink.net> wrote: > But more to the point, sometimes the information comes down simply > because the person wanted to put something unrelated up. > Why shouldn't I be able to use their previous version? You can, until the person takes it down. That's their decision, because they are the author, and you should respect their right to control their work. > If a hard copy author happens to issue an update of one of his books, > and deletes some of the previous data (perhaps for no other reason > than he wanted to add something else, but wanted to keep the page > count down), I can still use the earlier addition if I want. First off, if you had previously pulled down the information from the web site for your own personal use (as the author clearly intended by putting it there), then just like the old edition of the book you have that information, and no one is trying to take it away from you. But if you then turn around and make copies of that old edition and start selling them to the others (or even giving them away), then that is republishing that material. If it's a physical book, it's clearly illegal copyright infringement. Yet this is exactly what Ancestry and Google are doing with their cached pages. > And calling that disrespectful is silly. I disagree. From what I've seen, so do most people who author anything significant. Scott R. C. Anderson srca@mindspring.com

You are, I think, confusing issues. > You can, until the person takes it down. That's their decision, > because they are the author, and you should respect their right to > control their work. Of course they can take it down anytime they want. But its like a book in a library---once the information is out there, its out there. If not in a cache, than in someone's storage file. If you choose to use their information, they really have no complaint. They did, afterall, place it out there for use. The fact that they changed their mind about having their web page available is neither here no there. If you choose to use the information recovered from a cache, that's pretty much your perogative. But of course, that has NOTHING to do with copyright issues, which is the subject here. The information is not what's copyrighted. >> If a hard copy author happens to issue an update of one of his books, >> and deletes some of the previous data (perhaps for no other reason >> than he wanted to add something else, but wanted to keep the page >> count down), I can still use the earlier addition if I want. > > First off, if you had previously pulled down the information from > the web site for your own personal use (as the author clearly > intended by putting it there), then just like the old edition of > the book you have that information, and no one is trying to take it > away from you. Even if I agreed with you on that point, and I don't, its not really relevant is it? How would you know how the information was obtained? Someone could have captured the page themselves, or someone could have recovered it from a cache. After they've used the information, you would not be able to tell how, or where they obtained it, or from what version of a particular source they obtained it. > > But if you then turn around and make copies of that old edition and > start selling them to the others (or even giving them away), then > that is republishing that material. If it's a physical book, it's > clearly illegal copyright infringement. Yet this is exactly what > Ancestry and Google are doing with their cached pages. > >> And calling that disrespectful is silly. > > I disagree. From what I've seen, so do most people who author > anything significant. You do not understand the copyright issues here. You really need to go back in and read the archives on this subject. In particular you need to understand the difference between "information" and "Creative text". You might wish to look at Mike Goads discussion of this at http://www.pddoc.com/copyright/genealogy_copyright_fundamentals.htm Bill