Hello fellow list members, I wish to respond to the posting that Cliff Kerr (or Bill as he signed this note) wrote about me and the Dumfriesshire 1841 Free Census Project. You may remember Cliff from his postings concerning FreeCEN back in June. At the time he was being considered for the Dumfriesshire Coordinator for FreeCEN, but that did not work out and I have subsequently been appointed to that position. It is true that Cliff offered me the transcription of "17 parishes ready for checking." However, he did add: "Yes i require something in return and that is a copy of the finished census for my own use.." In my opinion, this last is in contradiction of copyright, and of the loan agreement whereby we gain access to the microfilms for transcription purposes only. I explained this to Cliff, but he didn't agree. I did suggest that if he would like to donate the transcriptions to the project then I may accept, but that it would have to be on a "no strings attached" basis, and that I would have to know who did each transcription. Needless to say he was not interested in this arrangement. Later, he sent a sample parish of transcriptions to me, the parish of Penpont, and told me of his plans for transcribing other parishes. In my opinion, one of the duties of any transcriber is to transcribe the records into the necessary format for the given project. My current transcribers are doing an excellent job in that respect, accepting my suggestions for corrections to their formatting very happily. When I tried to tell Cliff about the number of formatting changes needed for his data to be acceptable to the project (and there were many!), and also that the parish he planned to transcribe next had already been assigned to another transcriber, he got very angry in his messages and I have not contacted him since. I do not plan to answer any more of his postings on this list, and would caution anyone contacting him that any transcriptions that he has have nothing to do with FreeCEN. I want to affirm to everyone that the transcriptions that I am receiving will be uploaded on the FreeCEN site when the appropriate quality control has been completed. If anyone out there has done any Dumfriesshire transcriptions for FreeCEN before September, I want you to know that I don't have copies of them. If you would like them to be included in the FreeCEN project, please contact me off list at thomas.daly@stgeorges.qc.ca . Thomas Daly Dumfriesshire Coordinator FreeCEN DUMFRIES-GALLOWAY-L@rootsweb.com on November 18, 2004 at 2:55 AM +0000 wrote: >To those who are thinking of helping out the 1841 Dumfrieshire census. >BEWARE!!!!!! > >I offered them 16 parishes that i had transcribed and sent Tom one >Penpont >only to be told that it was not good enough and not the way he wanted and >to redo it again.. >The data was as correct as DGFHS printed booklet. >The parish was in the prescribed format for the Transcription of the >original census records ready to go to the next stage of checking the >data. >The rudeness of his Email was rather cutting and i told him so.. >Also he told me not to transcribe any more parish records and he would >tell >me what i was allowed to do.. > >So for those who can wait for the work to finish and would like to try >and >find there ancestors in the 1841 census contact me off line at . >thatcham@optusnet.com.au >Bill >Australia

Tom, I fail to see the outrageousness of a volunteer who transcribes so much material asking to receive a copy of the finished product "for his own use" (commercial use, maybe you would have a point). The idea of the whole project is that everyone can all use the content. The material is going to be free and public is it not? Now my legal practice does not include intellectual property law (I am not giving a legal opinion on anything in this email), but I do not see how Bill receiving a copy runs afoul of any copyright. It is certainly my understanding that copyrights allow for people to make personal use of content. That is why they put photocopiers in the library, why we can sign books out and why we can download stuff from the internet. Maybe someone involved with FreeCen could speak with an intellectual property lawyer and get an opinion. This isn't legal rocket science, so a valid opinion could probably be received pro bono. It seems a shame to have not just two transcriptions of the 1841 census of Dumfriesshire but now three transcriptions. How many times does this work need to be duplicated? Couldn't volunteer time be more wisely spent? I have to say that I have the impression that volunteer time is not valued and is being wasted. This is the reason why I am not offering to help! Jeffery Davidson ----- Original Message ----- From: "Tom Daly" <tom.daly@stgeorges.qc.ca> To: <DUMFRIES-GALLOWAY-L@rootsweb.com> Sent: Friday, November 19, 2004 10:08 AM Subject: Re: [D-G LIST] 1841 Dumfrieshire Census > Hello fellow list members, > > I wish to respond to the posting that Cliff Kerr (or Bill as he signed > this note) wrote about me and the Dumfriesshire 1841 Free Census Project. > You may remember Cliff from his postings concerning FreeCEN back in June. > At the time he was being considered for the Dumfriesshire Coordinator for > FreeCEN, but that did not work out and I have subsequently been appointed > to that position. > > It is true that Cliff offered me the transcription of "17 parishes ready > for checking." However, he did add: "Yes i require something in return and > that is a copy of the finished census for my own use.." In my opinion, > this last is in contradiction of copyright, and of the loan agreement > whereby we gain access to the microfilms for transcription purposes only. > > I explained this to Cliff, but he didn't agree. I did suggest that if he > would like to donate the transcriptions to the project then I may accept, > but that it would have to be on a "no strings attached" basis, and that I > would have to know who did each transcription. Needless to say he was not > interested in this arrangement. > > Later, he sent a sample parish of transcriptions to me, the parish of > Penpont, and told me of his plans for transcribing other parishes. In my > opinion, one of the duties of any transcriber is to transcribe the records > into the necessary format for the given project. My current transcribers > are doing an excellent job in that respect, accepting my suggestions for > corrections to their formatting very happily. When I tried to tell Cliff > about the number of formatting changes needed for his data to be > acceptable to the project (and there were many!), and also that the parish > he planned to transcribe next had already been assigned to another > transcriber, he got very angry in his messages and I have not contacted > him since. > > I do not plan to answer any more of his postings on this list, and would > caution anyone contacting him that any transcriptions that he has have > nothing to do with FreeCEN. I want to affirm to everyone that the > transcriptions that I am receiving will be uploaded on the FreeCEN site > when the appropriate quality control has been completed. > > If anyone out there has done any Dumfriesshire transcriptions for FreeCEN > before September, I want you to know that I don't have copies of them. If > you would like them to be included in the FreeCEN project, please contact > me off list at thomas.daly@stgeorges.qc.ca . > > Thomas Daly > Dumfriesshire Coordinator > FreeCEN > > > DUMFRIES-GALLOWAY-L@rootsweb.com on November 18, 2004 at 2:55 AM +0000 > wrote: > >To those who are thinking of helping out the 1841 Dumfrieshire census. > >BEWARE!!!!!! > > > >I offered them 16 parishes that i had transcribed and sent Tom one > >Penpont > >only to be told that it was not good enough and not the way he wanted and > >to redo it again.. > >The data was as correct as DGFHS printed booklet. > >The parish was in the prescribed format for the Transcription of the > >original census records ready to go to the next stage of checking the > >data. > >The rudeness of his Email was rather cutting and i told him so.. > >Also he told me not to transcribe any more parish records and he would > >tell > >me what i was allowed to do.. > > > >So for those who can wait for the work to finish and would like to try > >and > >find there ancestors in the 1841 census contact me off line at . > >thatcham@optusnet.com.au > >Bill > >Australia > > > ==== DUMFRIES-GALLOWAY Mailing List ==== > %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% > DO NOT send files as Email attachments to the list. > Send them privately - person to person. > %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% > >