Hi, Assuming your question is about government records in the United States, this is easy to answer. First, all U.S. government works are in the public domain, except for works created for the government by independent contractors, which MAY be protected by copyright. Works created by state and local government, though, may be covered by copyright. The good news is, though, that the types of things that genealogists are interested in are in the public domain because of the type of "works" that they are. Records document facts and little more. For a work to be covered under copyright, it has have some amount of originality added to it by its author. Mike Goad At 10:34 PM 2/12/01 -0700, jason mendenhall wrote: >Hi every one > I have been thinking about scanning in some of the documents that I >have like Probate records, Naturalizations, Christenings from church >records, and other to post online so that other people can also see >them. I was wondering if any one could tell me the best possible way to >find out what government records fall under the copyright, and which are >in the public domain? > Thanks for all of your help. > Jason Mendenhall. > > >==== COPYRIGHT Mailing List ==== >Support RootsWeb - http://www.rootsweb.com/rootsweb/how-to-subscribe.html > >============================== >Search more than 150 million free records at RootsWeb! >http://searches.rootsweb.com/