[SNIP] Are the hundreds of personally-taken photos (mostly tombstones, houses, streets and places that have the isolated and obscure-single-surname across the country) different from the obituaries I searched out, went to locations of newspapers, copied and then tediously typed out? What about the biographies, since they were public and after all, others could have gotten them from libraries and books if they had done the same years of effort of digging and typing? Can people download other people's stuff without asking, with attribution? [SNIP] Hi Bruce, I know that whoever took the original photo owns the copyright and I have a website where folks contibute tombstone photos. In order to protect those kind giving people I put their names on the photos before posting them to the web, thus if anyone harvests the pics, the names of the copyright holders are right there in plain view for all. see example: http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb com/~ohio/seneca/duke/ms/sec_1and2/ingraham_remeber_01a4.jpg The program I use to do this is called Irfanview and is a FREE program available on the net. http://www.irfanview.com/ It is a great small little photo editing program, easy to use, yet very powerful in its options! Just put your copyright information on the pics you take before posting them on the web. This will not stop the Unscrupulous folks from editing your name off, if they so choose. But does give you a better chance of getting credit for your efforts! As for citing sources of Public Domain information, transcribed by another person... Sometimes this depends on the software folks use, and their knowledge of how to properly use it! many "not so geeks" have no clue how to properly enter the source of their information... thus when they create a printout using that software, it just doesn't look right"... So it is possible, there is an "ignorance" problem there too.... My software has a place to put additional notes in the source. So I can post a source and add to the end... "As transcribed by John Doe" not sure if all folks would know how to do some of these things. I know a woman that has told me she can NOT figure out how to properly enter her sources... into her genealogy software source master list. but she HAS printed out genealogy reports and sent them to people. I know "ignorance is no excuse for the law", as the saying goes.... but also keep in mind, all folks are not intentionally doing something illegal, they just may not know that what they are doing is wrong. Kristina Kuhn Krumm Columbus, Ohio "dedicated" Genealogist Homepage: http://kriskuhn.net software I use: The Master Genealogist (TMG) available at: http://www.whollygenes.com All e-mail from this address is automatically scanned by Norton Antivirus before sent.