Dr Bill wrote... >> Best rule, don't publish living folks without their WRITTEN approval.<< WITH respect, dear Dr Bill, I must disagree! I don't believe you can make any hard and fast rules on this and I think that each case must be judged separately on its merits. I am afraid I take the view that there is far too much prissiness and preciousness around about so-called "privacy". Provided the information has been entirely legally and properly obtained from sources which are clearly in the public domain, I see no reason whatsoever why it should not be published and without recourse to the subject. It may be only polite to ask their permission, especially if they are a close relative (and you don't want to be cut out of their will!), but in theory anyway I see no particular reason why permission should be sought to publish material about living people. Were this to be the case, there would have been no decent truthful biography of anyone published in the last 100 years! Instead of honest, investigative work, we would have a flood of bland, boring, sanitised tomes written by individuals which totally conceal the truth about themselves. Give me Kitty Kelley on Frank Sinatra and Nancy Reagan and Prince Philip, rather than Frank Sinatra on Frank Sinatra, Nancy Reagan on Nancy Reagan and Prince Philip on Prince Philip, any day of the week, if you see what I mean. How are genealogists and biographers researching the lives of the famous to work if they have to go running to them to ask their permission every time? Whilst it may be argued that ordinary people are a different case, I can't see it myself. If you have a rule you must stick to it for all. I fail to understand why there is so much preciousness about birth dates and addresses. I realise the US system varies from state to state, but here in the UK we are able to go and obtain the birth certificate of anyone we like on payment of a fee of six pounds, 50 pence (about 10 dollars). I can get my next door neighbour's birth certificate and he can get mine and why not? The fact that I was born on a particular date is not my exclusive property, it is a matter of public record. So why should I care about someone else knowing it and publishing it if they want to? And please don't throw the old chestnut at me about fraud and that sort of thing. This is a problem for the banks and security forces, who should surely be clever enough to think up something more secure than one's birth date to protect people against confidence tricksters. I do not regard my address as being secret, either. I am in the phone book and on the electoral register. Where's the big deal? Honestly, some people are so precious about their privacy you would think they regard what they had for breakfast as a state secret! Let's not forgot that as genealogists, we are not just hobbyists but historians, too. In recording living people today, we are providing information for historians of the future. It's up to us to tell the truth as we discover it, not conceal facts just because they might upset dear old Aunt Maude. My rule is, if the data is very clearly in the public domain, accesible to all and is seen to be so, then you don't need anyone's permission to publish. There is already far too much secrecy perpetrated by governments and other powerful agencies and big multinational companies. We as ordinary people do not need to join in the climate of excessive privacy. Roy Stockdill Editor, The Journal of One-Name Studies The Stockdill Family History Society (Guild of One-Name Studies, FedFHS) STOCKDILL PREST YELLOW BOLTON WORSNOP GIBSON MIDGLEY BRACEWELL SHACKLETON BRADLEY MOODY in Yorkshire North & West Ridings MEAD YOUNG in Somerset, Wiltshire & Gloucestershire Web page of the Stockdill Family History Society:- http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/roystock Web page of the Guild of One-Name Studies:- http://www.one-name.org ”Never ask a man if he comes from Yorkshire. If he does he will tell you. If he does not, why humiliate him?" - Canon Sydney Smith (scholar and humorist 1771-1845)