This is a personal pet peeve of mine and I'm prepared for the flames that'll come back on this one. But consider for a moment one bit of really basic logic in this fiasco: The same organizations (FTM, et al....) that want these copyright laws enforced, are the same organizations that have been begging for your hard work and research, often referring to as " your contribution." They take your "contribution" and copyright it. Then they manufacture the CDs, publish the books and sell it. Is it me or does this seem wrong? I guess that little dialog box that pops up and says "Thanks for your contribution" is payment enough... In reality, the companies demand enforcement of the copyright law means so that no one will do look-ups, the exchange of information on the Internet dries up (including non-copyrighted info for fear of harassment and backlash), and people will have to buy the CDs and books to get any information at all. I'm not even going to go into the veracity of the information contained on the CDs and in the Books. Marketing Terrorism today is considered a Good Market Strategy. Just so I'm not accused of being off topic, I've written an article on the Hines/Jeffers/McMahon/Norris family. The Hines family includes the immigrant Baltzar Hines. Per the 1880 Census, Baltzar Hines was a Blacksmith from Woodsfield, Monroe Co., Ohio. If anyone would like an article on the rather complex family relationship that ensued, please let me know and I will forward it in a format suitable to your desire (Word, Text, WP, etc...) Regards, R. Jeffers A one-time "contributor" to FTM... My mistake and I do apologize. ----Original Message Follows---- From: "Sandra Ferguson" <ferg@wvinter.net> To: OHMONROE-L@rootsweb.com Subject: [OHMONROE-L] Fw: copyright Date: Thu, 8 Apr 1999 08:38:27 -0400 >T he "previous message" referred to below was a comment on copyright laws, and said that it is legal to give another person a lookup of one or 2 names, from a copyrighted book that you own, but what is called a "blanket lookup", (all information on a certain name, or large passages from a specific book) is an infringement of this law. With genealogy now online, this is new ground and we all need to be responsible, and not ruin the really good thing we have going for us. Several lists I belong to now no longer will allow lookups done from any book/CD unless the owner has written permission from >the author. Let me tell you, this kind of policy reduces the lookups to >about zip! This is really going to hurt us all, so I suggest that we try to stay within the limits of the law. > > >This, from another list manager: > > >>Hi, >>To the best of my knowledge, the previous message on copyright >>infringement was correct. A request to look-up all of the SMITH's is >>incorrect. We should all try to be a little more specific. >>The April issue of the IIGS Newsletter is now online at >> >>http://www.iigs.org/newsletter/9904news/index.htm.en >> >>This month, in a coordinated effort with the US Internet Genealogical >>Society (USIGS) and the Brown Family Genealogicial Society, IIGS >>Newsletter focuses on issues such as copyright infringement and >>plagiarism and the need to develop standards and guidelines for >>responsible online genealogy. >> .> _______________________________________________________________ Get Free Email and Do More On The Web. Visit http://www.msn.com