I believe with all the talk of copyright you need to consider the law. You as the injured party must prove you lost money or something of value because someone copied your work. Basically if you wrote a book and some copied some or all of it, it is your problem to prove you lost book sales to be able to collect. Meanwhile you have to be satisfied to call them a thief or whatever. Another little bit. As long as you change format or something substative, you are entitled to the info and can claim it as your own. It's just like this email. Snitch it, put your name on it, sell it or whatever and unless I can prove it cost me money or the like, then no harm. We are talking the law not what is ethical or nice. It is almost impossible to prove anyway. Let's say I went to the same Clerk of Court and copied the same records as you and posted them, who is to say who 'owns' the data though both might be identical. A similar thing is in property rights. If people are using your property by walking through say for a shortcut and you do nothing effective to prevent it, don't be surprised when the town or city takes your property for a public sidewalk. Kinda of use it or lose it thing. Same as a book, if you write it but don't sell it and someone copies it, you would be hard pressed to prove a loss. I copyrighted a computer program I wrote once upon a time. I had no way to determine if anyone swiped it and profited from it so why bother with the copyright?? Cheers, Ron Submarine Vet. On Sat, Apr 14, 2012 at 4:35 PM, JYoung6180@aol.com wrote: > If only names, dates, and places were taken/copied from the book there > is no copyright infringement but if entire chunks of notes or photos > or anything original was taken you may have a legal issue to pursue. > Of course, another issue is whether they credited your book as the > source...if they didn't you should at the very least ask to be > credited as the source. > Joan > PS: You could also provide the person with any corrections. In a > message dated 4/14/2012 5:21:31 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, > hmw2173@att.net writes: > > In 1989 I put together a hard back family genealogy book. Back then > it cost, what to me was a fortune! I gave a copy to those who helped > me with information on their family side. Many others wanted one. I > assume those others wanted it > given to them also! because very few were willing to come up with any > money. I have recently found some of the information which I had > printed in the book on Ancestor com and other places on line. So I > wouldn't advise anyone to write a book, and expect to get any funds > back for the expense. That far back, (1970 - 80) family history was > found by travel, a lot of it on foot, to cemeteries, to court-house, > out of state county records, and visiting the older generation. So, > its disheartening to see information on line, and mistakes printed. > --- hmwh > ===== > If you would prefer digest mode to mail mode, drop a note to > roots-admin@rootsweb.com and ask for the digest... > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to > ROOTS-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the > quotes in the subject and the body of the message