Joan, Facts are not owned, but it's pretty hard to state them as fact without a source. I don't even believe "facts" that aren't supported. Sometimes the source HAS to involve another person's or another entity's research. Examples of this are translations done by someone else even when they are purchased by you, public records or tombstone photos that someone shared with you, eyewitness accounts, and transcriptions or abstracts of records which no longer exist. Even when you cite microfilm, you do not cite the original source alone. You also cite the person or group that microfilmed the material. Sharing private emails to the web is a no-no, whether it's one or a zillion. It isn't ethical without permission. Messages posted to groups or on a web page are another story. Within reason, it's perfectly legal and perfectly ethical. If you don't want facts attributed to you, you'd be best off keeping them off of a group mailing list or web page, and specifying to people when you privately email them that they can't share with others. There's a catch, though. If you don't want to share, you shouldn't expect someone else to share with you. This does not mean that it's OK to publish a ton of some else's work of any kind. Debbie think we have probably run this subject into the ground <g> but FACTS are not owned by anyone and, as such, don't really need to be attributed to anyone--especially if that person doesn't wish to be associated with them. If anything--you would want to attribute the facts to the original records from which they were found.