Dave is right here-- although the facts of a person's life such as name, date, etc are considered public domain, the way those facts are PRESENTED can be copyrighted. Thus, an obituary, being a creation of the newspaper that printed it, can be copyrighted. This could be easily circumvented by changing the wording a bit when you post. From: "D. Bobenrieth" <dboben@penn.com> Subject: Re: [PAELK] Obituary Postings? Date: Sat, 13 Jan 2001 17:27:54 -0500 Mike, The facts are not copyrighted, just the obituary. I was going to post obituaries to the Elk County board until I read their notice. http://pa-roots.com/elk/data.html Dave > The facts of a person's life are public domain and are not protected by > copyright law. > > "The copyright laws affect both the research and the publication of your > genealogy, either a narrative family history or a simple pedigree family > line. First, though, consider that the basic facts about your ancestor's > life (such as name, birth date and place, marriage partner, date and place, > and death date and place) do not receive copyright protection, no matter > their source. Whether you went to the county courthouse, rented a microfilm > of the relevant records, or found the data in a commercial CD-ROM, the basic > facts of a person's life may be freely copied; they are in the public > domain." > > I would post those obits in the GenConnect Obit section for Elk County so > that more people will benefit from them! > > Mike Wennin > Come Visit the Cameron County Genealogy Project! > http://www.rootsweb.com/~pacamero > Check out the Erie County Genealogy page! > http://www.rootsweb.com/~paerie > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: GJ & SJ <gljslj@penn.com> > To: <PAELK-L@rootsweb.com> > Sent: Saturday, January 13, 2001 11:27 AM > Subject: Re: [PAELK] Obituary Postings? > > > She could post whole obits up to 1930 anyway without it being a problem. > > > > The Clarion mailing list has been posting the daily obituaries from the > > Clarion newspaper for a couple of months now, and there haven't been any > > problems. In fact, it has been a great resource, and I've added quite a > > few names to my database that I wouldn't normally have had available to > me. > > > > I won't tell. :-) > >