On Sunday, June 17, 2001 10:01 AM, [email protected] wrote: > If I contribute my GEDCOM to Rootsweb do I (1) have to copyright > it first? Anything capable of copyrighting is copyrighted at the moment you create it. > (2) lose any rights to the compilation of information Compilation of information, generally speaking, is not copyrightable. To the extent that your GEDCOM also contains explanatory notes, stories, etc. that are your original creative expression, those portions are copyrightable. > (3) can others down load my GEDCOM and sell it? Anything that is not copyrightable, yes. This is one disadvantage of the structured GEDCOM format, that those copyrightable portions are probably in separate fields that can be easily stripped from the rest (and I think they are when submitted to places like Ancestry's World Tree). If there is only an "image" version (e.g. on paper, GIF, etc.) with those copyrightable portions mixed in with the uncopyrightable portions, it makes it harder (though not impossible) to strip them out. > I understand it is probably immoral, but is it illegal if they > don't get my permission even though I got much of the information from > public records or interviews with living relatives? It doesn't matter what the source is. > (4) what if they sell only the information older than 1923 and delete my > current info -- can they sell it then? The date would only apply to copyrightable portions, as presumably they are quite recent and so have your life + 95 years. > Also, I exchanged my GEDCOM with one other person searching the > same name. She included my info into her file and now it is on > Ancestry.com. I didn't copyright the info and we didn't discuss > how she could use the info. I know it's my info because she > included my wife's family and her unusual family names which > are rarely found on the internet. Plus she listed several > living relatives. Can I write to Ancestry and ask them to > remove it? Nope, to the extent that it is just basic information. But: you should be able to get Ancestry to remove the living person information. Looking at their banner's '?' information on "Submitting to the Ancestry World Tree", they state: "Note: Before submitting, you must clear your file of living individuals." So your correspondent failed to follow Ancestry's rules, and you might be able to get their entire tree yanked :-) S R C A cott obert ranston nderson [email protected] Admin, {C{offield,ollosky,ranston,ummins},OHGuerns,USAGen}[email protected] USGenWeb Coordinator, http://www.usgennet.org/usa/oh/county/guernsey/