I think there have been a bunch of cancelled memberships over this. At least people have said they cancelled their membership. I don't have one. It was never useful to me I know others who have great success with Ancestry. But it is like any other corporation. You buy gas. You don't know even want to know what the corporation which sells you the gas does besides pump gas. In this case they stole from the poor and gave to the rich in a way and that's what got them in trouble. They still have it on their site but for now it is free. And keep in mind it isn't just USGenWeb archives. It is your personal genealogy web site they are taking things from also. And that means a lot of misinformation is going to be appearing on Ancestry.com. <g>

Dear Cheryl: I am sure there may be something going on here that is causing the complaints - but I can't seem to get any specifics. Nothing but generalities. As I said before, there have long been allegations about Ancestry "stealing" this file or that, but none of these allegations have - to my knowledge - ever been documented. I sometimes wonder why Ancestry doesn't get tired of people accusing it of things and just shut down RootsWeb entirely. Keep in mind that RW not only hosts the files donated by users to RW, but the million files of USGenWeb AND several thousand mailing lists. And it does this at absolutely no cost to any of the users of these services. We would have a tough time finding another sponsor that gives away - yes, GIVES AWAY - these kinds of helps. I was sorry to see RootsWeb become owned by a commercial company. But the hard fact is that of the millions of users of RootsWeb only a very few were willing to donate a few dollars a year to keep it going as a user-owned enterprise. My annual donation to RW was usually more than the cost of my subscription to Ancestry. Now I got both for the price of the latter, thanks to Ancestry. You said: >I think there have been a bunch of cancelled memberships over this. At > least people have said they cancelled their membership. I don't have > one. It was never useful to me I know others who have great success > with Ancestry. Again, can you direct me to where you are seeing these complaints so I can get more that an "I think"? > In this case they stole from the poor and gave to the rich in a way > and that's what got them in trouble. They still have it on their site > but for now it is free. Again, can you be more precise as to what was "stolen"? Who are they "in trouble" with? And I would like an example of what it is "they still have on their site." Like I said, I may be the original skeptical researcher. > And keep in mind it isn't just USGenWeb archives. It is your personal > genealogy web site they are taking things from also. And that means a > lot of misinformation is going to be appearing on Ancestry.com. <g> Ancestry is like any other site. Everything there isn't gospel. They have their own "user submitted" files and have had them for a long, long time. By now most of us are smart enough to recognize which ones are baloney and which ones are worth checking out. Richard P.S.: Is this the same argument we had two years ago? <g>