Hi all, I've run into a bit of a "situation", and was wondering if I had ANY recourse under copyright laws. I exchanged a series of e-mails with a guy who was researching some of the same family names that I was looking for, and now I find, not only all of my data posted on his website, but my private e-mails to him are posted as well!! We had stopped corresponding when he asked me to co-author an article on these families, but since a LOT of what I had was speculative, I made it clear that I was not comfortable portraying it as fact. He got upset, claiming that I had too high of a standard for what consists of "proof" of a relationship, and he finally stopped writing when he couldn't persuade me to lower my standards to meet his, so he was VERY CLEAR on the fact that I did NOT want my data published ANYWHERE yet! BTW, HIS standards, according to him, are: Come up with a best guess theory, and if you can't find anything to disprove it, it's more likely than not to be accurate......HUH??????? Anyway, when he sent me an e-mail regarding updates to his website, I was SHOCKED to find my e-mails to him copied into the notes section of various pages! There was nothing earth shattering in there, but there was personal information that I would never have wanted posted on a website! A couple of examples....he asked me who I was and where I lived, which I replied to, and it's now posted on his website. I forwarded him an e-mail that I had written to another genealogy friend of mine who is legally blind, so I added a note apologizing for the font size, and why it was so large....THAT'S posted on his website!!! I wrote to him and asked him to please remove my e-mails, as they contained personal information, such as my name, my former occupation, as well as those of LIVING people in the family, my e-mail address, the town where I live, and personal information on some of my research contacts. His response was that, unless I give him permission to use the data contained in my e-mails, that he HAS to keep them posted in order to publish the information they contain while preserving MY copyright?!!! SO, does anyone know if I actually HAVE a copyright to my e-mails? And if so, can someone publish them to the internet without my permission???? I almost feel like I'm being blackmailed here....give my permission, or live with my e-mails being published!!! PLEASE understand that I KNOW he has a right to publish the public record data, even though it isn't his research, but does he have the right to post my theories and other personal information, verbatim, without my permission????? In all fairness, he did say that he would remove some of the "personal" information that he didn't feel was relevant to "telling the story", which in my humble opinion was never HIS story to tell!!! BUT, he said that I have only found a portion of my e-mails so far, and that he will only remove information that I specify, and then only IF he deems it unimportant to the story! He has some 60,000 names in his database, and now he's claiming that the only way I can have ANY of MY information removed, is to go through all of the entries that pertained to the people we discussed, which are HUNDREDS, and read through ALL of their notes, to see if my information is there, and then beg to have it removed?!!! Am I really at his mercy here, or do I have any recourse to have this information removed, without giving him my permission to take credit for my research and theories?!!!! Any and ALL advice on this matter would be GREATLY appreciated!!!! THANKS!! Joan

I sure wish I could help you but I can't. I realize this in not any help, but I have had the same thing happen to me. I even had the surnames changed to what someone thought they should be. Good luck in whatever route you travel. John -----Original Message----- From: Jma8763@aol.com [mailto:Jma8763@aol.com] Sent: Wednesday, July 19, 2006 5:28 PM To: COPYRIGHT-L@rootsweb.com Subject: [COPYRIGHT] personal e-mails posted to the net?????? Hi all, I've run into a bit of a "situation", and was wondering if I had ANY recourse under copyright laws. I exchanged a series of e-mails with a guy who was researching some of the same family names that I was looking for, and now I find, not only all of my data posted on his website, but my private e-mails to him are posted as well!! We had stopped corresponding when he asked me to co-author an article on these families, but since a LOT of what I had was speculative, I made it clear that I was not comfortable portraying it as fact. He got upset, claiming that I had too high of a standard for what consists of "proof" of a relationship, and he finally stopped writing when he couldn't persuade me to lower my standards to meet his, so he was VERY CLEAR on the fact that I did NOT want my data published ANYWHERE yet! BTW, HIS standards, according to him, are: Come up with a best guess theory, and if you can't find anything to disprove it, it's more likely than not to be accurate......HUH??????? Anyway, when he sent me an e-mail regarding updates to his website, I was SHOCKED to find my e-mails to him copied into the notes section of various pages! There was nothing earth shattering in there, but there was personal information that I would never have wanted posted on a website! A couple of examples....he asked me who I was and where I lived, which I replied to, and it's now posted on his website. I forwarded him an e-mail that I had written to another genealogy friend of mine who is legally blind, so I added a note apologizing for the font size, and why it was so large....THAT'S posted on his website!!! I wrote to him and asked him to please remove my e-mails, as they contained personal information, such as my name, my former occupation, as well as those of LIVING people in the family, my e-mail address, the town where I live, and personal information on some of my research contacts. His response was that, unless I give him permission to use the data contained in my e-mails, that he HAS to keep them posted in order to publish the information they contain while preserving MY copyright?!!! SO, does anyone know if I actually HAVE a copyright to my e-mails? And if so, can someone publish them to the internet without my permission???? I almost feel like I'm being blackmailed here....give my permission, or live with my e-mails being published!!! PLEASE understand that I KNOW he has a right to publish the public record data, even though it isn't his research, but does he have the right to post my theories and other personal information, verbatim, without my permission????? In all fairness, he did say that he would remove some of the "personal" information that he didn't feel was relevant to "telling the story", which in my humble opinion was never HIS story to tell!!! BUT, he said that I have only found a portion of my e-mails so far, and that he will only remove information that I specify, and then only IF he deems it unimportant to the story! He has some 60,000 names in his database, and now he's claiming that the only way I can have ANY of MY information removed, is to go through all of the entries that pertained to the people we discussed, which are HUNDREDS, and read through ALL of their notes, to see if my information is there, and then beg to have it removed?!!! Am I really at his mercy here, or do I have any recourse to have this information removed, without giving him my permission to take credit for my research and theories?!!!! Any and ALL advice on this matter would be GREATLY appreciated!!!! THANKS!! Joan ==== COPYRIGHT Mailing List ==== To unsubscribe from this list click on mailto:COPYRIGHT-L-request@rootsweb.com?subject=unsubscribe (list mode) or mailto:COPYRIGHT-D-request@rootsweb.com?subject=unsubscribe (digest mode)  Contact COPYRIGHT-admin@rootsweb.com for list related problems. For the COPYRIGHT-L archives, go to http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/index/copyright. ============================== New! Family Tree Maker 2005. Build your tree and search for your ancestors at the same time. Share your tree with family and friends. Learn more: http://landing.ancestry.com/familytreemaker/2005/tour.aspx?sourceid=14599&ta rgetid=5429

<Jma8763@aol.com> wrote: > BTW, HIS standards, according to him, are: Come up with a best > guess theory, and if you can't find anything to disprove it, > it's more likely than not to be accurate......HUH??????? Without suggesting he is right and you are wrong, I will point out that the above process is often the ONLY way to reach a "genealogical proof." (And, yes, reasonable people do differ about conclusions reached under this process.) Instead of calling it a "best guess," of course, it is a "working hypothesis." Once you establish the hypothesis, you start collecting evidence that supports or contradicts it. If you collect enough bits and pieces - and NONE are contradictions that cannot be rationally explained - at some point you should be convinced that the hypothesis is correct. This approach is sometimes called "preponderance of evidence," but that criminal legal concept places too high a test ("beyond a reasonable doubt") before reaching a conclusion. If you are interested, there is a chapter covering this topic in an on-line course I prepared many years ago. You can find it at: http://www.pipeline.com/~richardpence/classdoc.htm#partfour Richard A. Pence 3211 Adams Ct, Fairfax, VA 22030-1900 Voice 703-591-4243 Fax: 703-352-3560 Pence Family History <www.pipeline.com/~richardpence/>