The English gov't has changed their copyright rules effective March 26, 1999 for their government records. These are not in the public domain in the same way that U. S. government records are and have been under government copyright for 100 to 200 years. The English gov't is not releasing most of these records but there are some exceptions. Records that have already been *published* are not being released from copyright. It looks to me like this would apply to the material Carol would like to put on the WWW. My guess is that McWethey made proper arrangements with the PRO in 1933 to get his copyright...and Genealogical Publishing has been in business a long time. I would also guess that they probably did whatever was needed to protect their investment in this printed mater. A detailed explanation of the new guidelines is available at http://www.pro.gov.uk/about/copyright/default.htm and a long leaflet explaining copyright as it applied to English Government Records is at http://www.pro.gov.uk/about/copyright/copyright.pdf One person told me that because we live in the US, we are not bound by the copyright laws of other countries...this doesn't strike me as good advice and I personally would be very careful about violating these laws. It is very commendable to want to help other genealogists by putting material on the WWW but it is not worth exposing yourself and your family to a lawsuit. If I understand copyright laws correctly, the loser in any copyright lawsuit is required to pay all expenses including all attorney's fees. Perhaps Charlotte would comment on that, as she is an attorney. The LDS church has something like 10 million microfilms, which are available for a modest rental through their local FHC's. A huge number of these are government records which have not been indexed, transcribed, extracted, or published and are available for any volunteer who wishes to compile them and make them available to the public. Aside from the practical issues and with apologies to Carol, because I see her as a very nice person who wishes to help with the genealogical volunteer movement, isn't there an issue of plagiarism here? Kathleen.