Hi Pat, These e-mails were DEFINITELY NOT something that would fall under standard wording, genealogy terms! They were lengthy explanations of what facts I had found, and what it was about them that, in my opinion, either supported someone belonged in a particular family, or indicated they did NOT. They were loaded with my theories, hunches and opinions, as well as lots of local history to question what attracted people to this area, or why they might have moved to an area that was mountainous, yet remain farmers, when their land here was and still is extremely fertile farm land. Here's an example...."If Anna was a maiden aunt, why would she have been living with her widowed "niece-in-law", as opposed to one of her two brothers, who lived next door. The children were not young enough for the widow to have needed help raising them, and I would think that the last thing the young widow would have needed would be another mouth to feed." This was in support of Anna being the mother-in-law, as opposed to a maiden aunt. You get the picture!!! LOTS of stuff, loaded with MY ideas!! THANKS! Joan A. In a message dated 7/22/2006 5:02:09 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, pasher@ee.net writes: At 01:36 PM 7/22/2006, you wrote: >I wasn't talking about her data but her personal >emails to him ... his publication of them as a whole >exceeds Fair Use. Kathi, You may be correct; but then again, you may not. My point was that just because facts are presented in narrative form, the narrative is not necessarily copyrighted. The words/intellectual concepts must be original to the author. Phrases such as he was born, he married, he had these children, he enlisted, are standard nomenclature used by all genealogists over and over again. It absolutely depends on the content and wording of the personal emails, which I have not seen. Analysis of facts and conclusions based on discovered facts usually result in some limited copyright to the narratives because there is some wording that is original to the author. But the equivalent of a "narrative" as would be produced by many genealogy programs contains nothing original. Producing copyrightable genealogical narratives requires thought -- and don't we all wish there was more "thought" before "publication". Pat