Goodness only knows I am one of the last people to want to defend familytreemaker, ancestry, etc. "the Broderbund/Mattel crowd" but there is something you must all understand: Rootsweb is now owned by this same parent company. "We" weren't generous enough in our donations to keep "free genealogy" via rootsweb afloat. Pure and simple. The "owners" of rootsweb did negotiate an agreement w/the parent company to keep rootsweb "free" access; for how long, etc. I don't know. They did their best, "we" didn't support them. Most all genealogy material is available FREE, its a matter of public record. Birth certificates, death certificates, land records, wills ..... it is only copyright-able when it is proffered in a unique format or way. We can either keep our research to ourselves, share it with no one and let it die with us or end up in the hands of someone in the family who could care less a couple of generations down from us - or we can share freely. Which includes the risk of someone else picking up the info, utilizing it and not crediting us as the source of gathering the information and perhaps profiting from our work when we don't. Each of us has to make our own decision in this regard. We have no guarantees that someone we share our info with privately might not make it available to someone who will utilize it to make a profit, we don't have any guarantees those we share our info with privately won't provide it to someone who will produce it and make it available w/o sharing those profits with us. Realistically, how many of us WILL follow thru and publish a book of our own family research? Just as with information "we" garner off the web and thru e-mail lists is subject to supposition as opposed to fact until we substantiate and document it ourselves the same holds true to the information we purchase on CDs and in books. THAT is the lesson we must ALL learn. DOCUMENT: PRIMARY DOCUMENTATION is the responsiblity of each and every one of us to determine for our own records. To do less is sloppy research and not research at all but rather supposition and should be labeled as such. Supposition until PROVED. We won't always be able to find and provide primary documentation. In such a case it is our responsibility to document the information from as many RELIABLE secondary sources as possible. Just because it is printed in a book or on a CD doesn't make it so. And lastly, I have NOT seen any PROOF that ancestry, FTM, the Broderbund/Mattell companies" smaller companies are making use of GenForum info on CDs and profiting from it. Where is the PROOF, the PRIMARY DOCUMENTATION of that? Certainly, this recent post didn't provide any. Let the buyer beware.