-- Your message was: (from "Charlotte ~") > I see nothing unethical about putting public information on the > web...sorry...public is public...I think the copyright may have died with > the author, if there ever was one, it has only been until recently that an > authors family could extend the copyright and then that is limited to 75 > years...but you can't copyright public documents anyway...sooooo you're > talking apples and oranges... > > But making something that is already public, public, is certainly not > unethical...best way to find out is to put them on the web and find > out...they'll let you know...<g>...and I suspect they wouldn't mind ....at > least the author wouldn't...remember book form was the only form to make > info public in the 1800s...today we have the web... --------- In a lot of ways, what's legal really isn't the issue. The issue is doing The Right Thing. The right thing generally involves working with authors, gensocs, and publishers and trying to avoid damaging the economic value of what they do. Why? There's almost an infinite amount of genealogical data out there, most of it completely uncopyrighted and of no economic value to anyone. We should focus on bringing that material online. Right now, the last thing you want to bring online is a GPC reprint. That material is already relatively accessible to the community, and by eroding GPC's economic interest you'll be discouraging them from creating more good stuff for genealogists. Cheers, B. -- Dr. Brian Leverich Co-moderator, soc.genealogy.methods/GENMTD-L RootsWeb Genealogical Data Cooperative http://www.rootsweb.com/ P.O. Box 6798, Frazier Park, CA 93222-6798 [email protected]