At 02:00 AM 6/6/00 -0500, Margaret Miller wrote: >Mustn't a work be original before it can be copyrighted? If this is >true, then what is copyrightable about a genealogy book---unless, of >course, it has some unique features????? Geneally, they are composed of >lineages based on public records. Copyrights and genealogy can be very confusing. A "lost" cousin of mine saw the copyright notice on my webpage and freaked out. He thought that if he gave me any of his research, then I would own it. Not true, but hard to explain. I'll try though. When you take information from the public domain and publish it, you CAN copyright the transcription and reorganization of the information, but the original information is still in the public domain. For instance, companies like Broderbund transcribe census information and put it on CDROMs. You can still go transcribe your own copy of the census. You can even copy small portions of Broderbund's census data and publish it, with your own copyright, assuming you provide an editorial or contextual enhancement, such as saying THIS entry corresponds THIS family, THAT entry corresponds to THAT family. This is called "Fair Use". Just don't try republishing the entire county. Posting a list of names from a copyrighted book to this list would be considered "Fair Use". Posting an entire chapter probably wouldn't. Many people in genealogy now use what is known as a "copyleft" notice. That's a double pun on copyright - it's more liberal, or to the LEFT, of a traditional copyright, and the information is LEFT in the public domain, providing no one tries to profit commercially from the information. But it still asserts copyright ownership for the person who compiled the information. If you look around the RootsWeb website, you'll see a copyleft notice at the bottom of most of their webpages. A list of links on copyright law can be found at: http://www.cit.cornell.edu/ats/atc/materials/copy/refs.shtml Jeffrey