Thanks Gina. Rita---Judy Bain's sister. -------------- Original message -------------- From: "Gina Richardson" <[email protected]> > Hello everyone, > > I figured I would give you all a hot topic to read about over the Labor Day > weekend. > > There has been a heated discussion on the USGenWeb Project email lists and other > not for profit Genealogy Groups about Ancestry.com. I wanted to pass the > information along to you in case you were not aware of the issue. I think all > who are researching their history should know what is going on and be able to > voice their opinion to Ancestry.com. > > It seems that Ancestry.com went through the internet searching and spidering > websites and cached pages that had to do with Genealogy. Cached as in stored > copies of the websites on their server. They removed the headers and footers > and put their Ancestry.com header on the pages and then offered the database to > their pay per view members. When the headers and footers were stripped it > removed the information about who created the pages and the copywrite or any way > to contact the person who supplied the information. > > They didn't ask permission to copy the pages and they took pages that were from > not for profit groups who work and spend their own time and money to provide > free websites for researchers and put it on a pay site. It was not a list of > links to the actual sites but a copy of it. > > Another reason it is bothering the Genealogy groups that were cached is that > they have been buying out all the other companies. They now own Rootsweb (who > sponsors most of the USGenWeb) , Genealogy.com, Family Tree Maker, and others. > The concern is that our free sites will be made pay per view. > > It caused an uproar and now they have pulled the database from the pay site and > made it free. Their reason for copying the pages was to "preserve" the pages > for the future. I can see some reasoning to this, if a page is created and the > creator removes it or passes away, the page is no longer available, but the > cached page would still be there for future researchers. > > It is on the free side of the site but you must still register and create a name > and password to access it. That is a problem to some people too, you shouldn't > have to register and give personal information to view a site that was created > for free viewing. Ancestry spamming and selling your information to third > parties after you register is another topic that is in question. > > Personally my first reaction to this was..... > Ancestry smacks their logo and copywrite on all their images and has a whole > page on their site about copywrites and lawsuits if you reproduce their pages > and then they went and did the same thing to all the smaller organizations and > then tried to make a buck off of it. > > The links below will take you to the different articles about the whole ordeal > if you would like to read more about what is happening. You can also do a search > for articles, I typed in "Ancestry.com cached pages" and came up with several > hits. > > I think it is important for all of us to keep up on issues that may affect the > way we research not only with these different websites but with laws that > pertain to public records and who has the right to access them. > > http://blogs.ancestry.com/circle/?p=1785 > > http://blogs.ancestry.com/circle/ > > http://genealogy.about.com/b/a/255997.htm > > http://blog.eogn.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/2007/08/internet-biog-1.html > > I hope everyone has a wonderful Labor Day! > Gina Richardson > INGenWeb County Coordinator > Delaware County IN http://www.rootsweb.com/~indelawa/ > Randolph County IN http://www.rootsweb.com/~inrandol/ > Rootsweb Admin. [email protected] > Rootsweb Admin. [email protected] > ******************************** > Please Visit The Randolph County INGenWeb Project > http://www.rootsweb.com/~inrandol/ > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to > [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in > the subject and the body of the message