I am not a member of the LDS Church, however I have used their services on many occasions, and I think we should be thanking them for their work. The time and effort to film records is huge (and I have done this for our own Church records) and I guess quite expensive, however the Church doesn't charge for you to view the film. The only cost incurred is when postage has to be paid, and I by choice always make a small donation towards the electricity etc. at their reading room. I guess they believe that for the effort they have made to have the millions of records available throughout the world they deserve to be able to copyright that film. I support that concept. I am currently transcribing online thousands of records which they intend (at least that is my understanding) to make available online free, so let's be grateful to all who volunteer in whatever capacity to help us in our research. Megan McKenzie South Australia.

I have been user of the services available from the LDS Church for about 25 years and find that they are probably the institution that has done the most for genealogical research anywhere in the world. I don't believe that they have any copyright on the material in their posession, and if they do, they certainly don't enforce it. I have hundreds of copies of documents that I either obtained at my local LDS centre or which I obtained by mail from the main library in Salt Lake City. If there is an impediment to obtaining copies of parish records at the National Library, I suspect that it's the Catholic Church. -----Original Message----- From: irl-limerick-bounces@rootsweb.com [mailto:irl-limerick-bounces@rootsweb.com] Sent: February 21, 2008 4:36 AM To: IRL-LIMERICK-L@rootsweb.com Subject: [IRL-LIMERICK] LDS & films I am not a member of the LDS Church, however I have used their services on many occasions, and I think we should be thanking them for their work. The time and effort to film records is huge (and I have done this for our own Church records) and I guess quite expensive, however the Church doesn't charge for you to view the film. The only cost incurred is when postage has to be paid, and I by choice always make a small donation towards the electricity etc. at their reading room. I guess they believe that for the effort they have made to have the millions of records available throughout the world they deserve to be able to copyright that film. I support that concept. I am currently transcribing online thousands of records which they intend (at least that is my understanding) to make available online free, so let's be grateful to all who volunteer in whatever capacity to help us in our research. Megan McKenzie South Australia. ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to IRL-LIMERICK-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message