FYI, I received this and am most concerned since this interpretation of the law would be most detrimental for genealogists. E. Kaspar ******************************************** FROM: Kristy Gravlin <[email protected]> For those who want to read the actual legislative bill which was submitted to the House Judiciary Committee regarding copyright laws, you can access this URL PDF file: (URLs not allowed on this site). The core of the proposed law can be found in Section 3: Any person who makes available in commerce to others a quantitatively substantial part of the information in a database generated, gathered, or maintained by another person, knowing that such making available in commerce is without the authorization of that person (including a successor in interest) or that person's licensee, when acting within the scope of its license, shall be liable for the remedies set forth in Section 7... "In plain English, what this law is saying is that copyright protections will be extended to databases, regardless of whether the information contained within those databases is, itself, copyrightable. Collections of information which is, itself, unprotected (pricing information, sports scores, weather data, etc.) will become protected. In a sense, this law allows somebody who compiles a database to own the facts found therein." ___________________________________________________________________ My understanding of this bill is such that when I post information on the internet about my family's surname, ancestors and descendants alike, it will become the property of large databases who will receive the information via their technology. Thus I would no longer own MY information of MY family. If I wanted to write a family history book based on my lineage, then I would have to pay that "owner" copyright royalties for MY own information. This is extremely unfair. -Kathleen