Good comments, Cliff! You've brought up some very interesting ideas for us to ponder. Jean Chapman Snow Cliff said: <It is a delight to me to see so much interest in HR 3261- and that is a national bill, not just for one or a few states. There are a lot of opinions on what is copyright and what is not. Also, it has been expressed that much in genealogy is in the public domain. Another opinion is that you cannot copy such information if it is in the originator's format. For genealogists, most of us use a publicly purchased format, including PAF and so many others. What do you think it means (or should mean) if A copies the data from B's list but puts in in the format of another program? The basic data is the same, name, birth, death, marriage. And how do you make attribution to an original author? Examples in my own case: I had information on my ancestors, partly from my great grandfather's Bible. That was his data (before this all came into question). I then found further ancestors on a web site that did attribute the author. My query as to how to reach the author went unanswered. To further complicate the matter, I then found a lot of additional information on Rootsweb in one site and it was further substantiated by similar data in another Rootsweb site. Since I am placing this data in my PAF file (which is a different format from the others), 1. How do I attribute the data (do I do it for each person, one at a time, and if so, how?) or make a comment somewhere that I took data from these sources.>