Dear Ladies & Gentlemen, If I may, I'd like to state my conclusions re: what I've learned about copyrighting family trees & then wait for your comments. 1. Translations can be copyrighted. In a dark, large storage room, there are 2000 books of manuscripts--all written in Italian calligraphy. I pore over them, locate 20 books, extract 50 manuscripts and from them build a family tree, transforming the Italian calligraphy into modern English. For the first time in history, I write down & document in English that Joe B is the gggggdad of Mary Sue--that's an original translation & is copyrightable. That is not a mechanical act. It requires total concentration, an incredible imagination to expect the unexpected and a great sense of logic. That's not mechanical--it's intellectual. That can be copyrighted. I keep a copy of the originals & the receipt for the copy charges. If someone asks me to prove my sources & prove I did the translation, I pull out the original, the final product & the reciepts. I really feel now that this is more at a moral level than a legal one. It goes back to jr high & high school teachers haranguing about plagiarism. 2.My work on the families' trees will not be published as a separate entity, rather it will appear in a sociological & genealogical study of 2 small towns in Central Italy. The reference text will use as its sources all the original manuscripts concerning the towns. These documents are semi-public in location, supposedly public in nature, by this I mean that they are extremely difficult to access. Of course, the original manuscripts will not be included in the textbook, only samples of them will be shown. I'll keep all the copies of the originals in case someone questions a connection I made or didn't make. Of course, once the reference book is published and someone lifts a paragraph, without getting permission & footnoting it, it would be easy to prove the act. It might not be that easy to prove whodunnit. 3. My work will never be published on the web. I'm still rather peeved over the fact that some big company sexually abused my original work and is profiting from their incestuous act. The reader may note that what I'm refering to is the fact that genealogy.com "found" my original 1980 family tree and "adjusted" it. On their cd, my grandfather's grandfather married his own son and produced my grandfather. Yes, I did inform them immediately of the heinous deed. Further, I informed them that I made 5 copies of their CD & begged them to sue me. Never heard nuttin, honey. Not holding my breath, either. 4. One very important conclusion is that this kind of work is a real brain teaser & if there's money to be made & I'm the one dun the work, I expect an important part of that money. 5. My work will never be published on the net, at least not by me. If I hold the copyright for a reference book that's successful, that's enough icing on my cake. I don't need to have my ancestors' memory and information lathered all over cyberspace in such a common manner or by such a street-corner method. I know that a cultured person would present the completed work and then its proof. Example, one of the slurper family tree websites provides the reader with 200+ listings for the Neros of the town of Palmoli, 40 miles SE of my ancestral home. Upon inspection, one notices that the writer provided exceedingly few connections. Logic would dictate that if you have 100 marriages of x surname, all from the same, small town whose migration patterns are traditional 1800's Italian, they should all be connected by blood in some way. (During that century & in that area, migration was very low, although not as low as the prior centuries). That connection could range anywhere from sibling to 5th cousin. No connections are found within the work. Illogical! This shows the work to be incorrect and/or half-baked! If I had done this and published it, I would feel shame. The toughest, brain-teasing work was never done. Docs were pulled, part of the info slurped and work submitted. THIS IS MECHANICAL WORK! No inductive & deductive reasoning skills were involved or applied. End of story. All loose ends! That kind of work is not worth the space it's taking up. Comments welcome & thank you, Eugene Nero 305 993 5023

Helen! That's the problem. You read the first line & react. I don't write one liners. My goals in posting to this google group are: 1. Learn about the law & I have done that. I think the most salient bit of info is the comment by Sandra Day O'Conner re: historical fact. I am fully aware that one can lift a family tree from a textbook and reprint elsewhere. Once the textbook printed & sold, I really don't care if someone 'lifts' parts of trees. I would prefer that they give credit where credit's due. My cousin's daughter put up a website a year ago showing off her family using my work. She never told me; I stumbled onto it 2 months ago. I was impressed by her recognition of my work. Right there, first line in bold print: The source of this info is: ENN, etc. Beautiful! She did it with out my permission or knowledge, but she gave me in big bold print recognition. She not only new the law; she new the morality. She understood the concept and defect of plagiarism. 2.Publically lambast genealogy.com into being more careful when slurping op's work. I'd like to see them go more into the Mormon requirement of citing sources. Scholarship requires that we quote our source, or at least that's one thing I remember from my high school years back in the '60S. 3. Publically advise that I am writing a reference text with a much smaller focal point than: Itals to America, vols 1 thru-12, yet similar to it. 4. We can't stop a thief if he wants to break into our house in the middle of the night. What we can do is put up proper lighting around the house's exterior. That's what I'm doing here. Members of my very extended family & the ccc who gave my work to genealogy.com read my postings. Family politics, in such a large and proud family, is very intricate. No one will ever take sides, that's a no no. Nonetheless, their exists within all of us a very strong sense of honesty. Helen, you wrote: All you do is post to a genealogy newsgroup about someone breaking copyright then I feel you are tilting your lance at windmills. It is far beyond my parameters to comment on your feelings. The plain fact is saw the first line and ran with it. A lot of people are like that nowadays. They go off half-cocked and do their thing leaving the messes for others to clean up. The only question that has remained unanswered for me is this year's sales stats for Italians to America!!! That author has raked in the money & that's not jealousy, it's envy. Well, as I say, I'm no Don Quijote, I'm too young. Maybe in another 20 years. All I'm doing is throwing the spaghetti up against the wall to see what happens. If it sticks, fine, if it doesn't, it needs more cooking. That's all that's going on here. A little testing of the waters, notice to g.com, to family members, a little publicity--that's all, nothing more. Remember that we all write in very different ways and for various reasons. I hope I've shown why. Bye & keep in touch, Regards, Eugene