Virginia wrote: > While one may not be able to get a copywrite on the > dates, someone put those dates and people together in a way to construct a > lineage. > Ancestry states on their Web Page that either the material belongs to them or > the original source and can be used only to construct one's own family > research. The problem is that it is simply impossible to copyright public information. Copyright only protects "creative original authorship" and no matter how artfully a collection of facts is woven into a story, the facts themselves can not be copyrighted. A lineage can't be copyrighted either, because the fact that James Smith is the son of John Smith is no more privileged information than the fact that James Smith was born in 1705 in Virginia. The fact that it may have taken a lot of effort to piece together has no bearing on the issue of whether there is any creative authorship involved. I read a message recently, possibly in the archives of this list, quoting Justice O'Connor's opinion in a Supreme Court case to the effect that no matter how much effort goes into a project, only the part of the project which is original creative content can be copyrighted. In the case of a DAR lineage book, the lineages may be narrated in a certain style, composed on the page in a particular typeface, arranged by some convenient system, possibly including drawings or photographs. These various elements may or may not be copyright protected. But the facts are the facts, and whether you summarize the lineage or copy the facts one by one you are not violating the copyright because there is no copyright. Peter Hirtle <[email protected]> wrote: > Even though the material may be out of copyright, use of material from the > Ancestry.com site would be governed by its terms of use. At > <http://www.ancestry.com/legal/terms.htm> I found the following: ... > So it sounds to me that while posting material from the DAR books might not > be a copyright violation, it would be a violation of the license terms of > the Ancestry site. The problem at Ancestry.com is that almost nothing on their site can be copyrighted, and they know it. They can't use copyright as a threat to keep people from reposting their content (which could discourage other people from becoming paying members) so they have to put it in their terms of service. The worst that can happen to the ancestry.com member is to have his account canceled. The listowner who reposts the data has no liability at all. Let me try to give one quick (but possibly redundant) example. I recently found out that USGenWeb has census transcriptions for a county I'm interested in. The transcription file has a copyright date and a stern warning from USGenWeb that it may not be reproduced or used in any way without the permission of the transcriber. Sounds nice, but it's a toothless warning. There is no creative or original content in the file at all. It's a verbatim transcript of a public document. Once a document is in the public domain, nothing anyone can do to it can drag it back under the umbrella of copyright. The fact that I could order the same microfilm and make my own transcript proves that it is a public document, and the mere fact that someone labored to put it online does not make it any less public. It would certainly be discourteous to use the file without notifying the transcriber, but it would not be illegal. -- Tom Thatcher [email protected]