In a message dated 6/14/2003 12:25:48 AM Central Daylight Time, pansy.rumsey@verizon.net writes: > About charging for information. I some instances I can see it. But most of > > what some sites have is what they have "harvest" from those of us who had > > freely sent in to USGen Web and other places. Then they take that and put > it > > in CD''s and charge others what we shared freely. You are right. I don't either but you have to check which company you are talking about. Here as an example: This is from the Genealogy.com policy page: D. You acknowledge and agree that you shall receive no compensation, monetary or otherwise, for any Submission and that Submissions that are input, uploaded, or posted by you to the Sites may become part of a database that is owned exclusively by MyFamily.com, Inc., and that may be reproduced by MyFamily.com, Inc. in any format, in whole or in part, including without limitation in an electronic storage format, such as CD-ROM or DVD or an online subscription, for distribution, sale, or any other purpose, throughout the world. They told people up front that they were going to use the submitted data and sell that data on CD. It is just that lots of folks didn't read the policy before choosing to use that service. Now.... look at the Ancestry.com policy: User provided content Portions of the Service will contain user provided content, to which you may contribute appropriate content. For this content, Ancestry is a distributor only. By submitting content to Ancestry, you grant MyFamily.com, Inc., the corporate host of the Service, a limited license to the content to use, host, distribute that Content and allow hosting and distribution on co-branded Services of that Content. They have the rights for that distribution only but they do not claim rights to resell the data. Ancestry.com isn't the company that sold data on CD - Genealogy.com was. And... then there are some other companies out there that sell you a subscription to online data and you find that all you get are pages of links to what is in essence the USGenWeb sites or other free sites. Those companies are pure scam and do attempt to exploit data that has been placed out there for free access. As for the subscription databases on Ancestry.com if you scroll to the bottom of the first page of each of those databases you will find the source for that database. Normally those sources are published sources that Ancestry has then purchased the rights to distribute via a database. They are not the same information that appears on the USGenWeb sites. I can't comment on the sources for the data on Genealogy.com sites because I don't happen to be a paid subscriber of that service. But I would imagine that they would provide that information as well. Point is - before you subscribe to anything service read the terms of service carefully. That way you will feel more comfortable and not be surprised at a later date. Take care - Emma