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. <G> 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]

Gina, I have not read about this already, so thank you for letting us know. Cathy Lampshire ________________________________ From: [email protected] on behalf of Gina Richardson Sent: Sat 9/1/2007 9:27 AM To: [email protected]; [email protected] Subject: [INRANDOL] Genealogy Heated Debate 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. <G> 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