Thomas Hamm wrote: <snip> >I need to check on the copyright implications of this. One >consideration is whether a genealogist making and distributing >multiple copies of a CD, even to people only for their personal use >and not for profit, would have an effect on the copyright holder. It >seems to me parallel to the cases involving the music industry. <snip> I posted something a little earlier about this, but sent it in under a non-subscribed address. After a few years experience on mailing lists, I shouldn't be making a beginner's mistake like that! Anyway, five points ... [not legal opinion, just as I understand the situation] ... (1) Anyone purchasing and unpacking a commercial CD might somewhere in the process be entering into a legal contract not to transmit the information. (2) The real issue of copyright is whether the financial interests of the publisher and author are harmed by transmission of the information. If by posting or emailing information to an individual or list, you are diminishing the number of copies of the CD that will be sold, then the publisher and author have a good legal case against you. If you aren't damaging their financial interests, then copyright doesn't have much in the way of teeth. I would think that anyone researching Nantucket Quakers is a potential purchaser of the CD under discussion and so any dissemination of the contents is damaging to the interests of publisher and author. It is, in effect, theft. (3) This sort of thing boomerangs badly onto us as genealogists. If the authors aren't getting a fair return for their research, then they are unlikely to do more research. (4) The moral burden doesn't lie only on the person posting the information. It also lies on the people requesting the data - there's not any great ethical difference between requesting a large chunk of data from a commercial CD and stealing a pair of socks from your local store. (5) The above doesn't mean that people can't post or transmit small amounts of data (within the rules laid own by the list administrator). You could easily argue, if this is done with full details of the source, that it is a form of advertising and will enhance sales. Chris

1. It is good for genealogists and internet list users to be aware of their rights and duties under copyright law. 2. It is also the case that discussions of the details can go on and on and on and on...... 3. Copyright law is not Quaker genealogy and is therefore off-topic here. 4. Let us now return to Quaker genealogy. 5. Comments and questions about this message should go to the list administrators *off-list*: <treadway@netins.net> and <tomh@earlham.edu>. -- Dan Treadway P. O. Box 72 Gilbert IA 50105 treadway@netins.net http://showcase.netins.net/web/treadway/