In a message dated 8/18/2007 10:22:41 AM Eastern Standard Time, [email protected] writes: I have had a complaint from someone about some family history material that another person asked me to post on the Woodruff County, AR web site, and I did. It's about the former person's family and using material that he originally had on another web site. He's also saying that the post is not giving proper credit in the article(s), and that there are copyright problems. He's pretty upset. Never run into this. Does anyone know if there are any policies or procedures about that sort of thing? Gloria coordinator, Woodruff County, Arkansas Gloria- This is a really loaded question! It would require that we know a lot more about the situation than you have presented in order to answer it--and the copyright issues would be better suite to COPYRIGHT-L. That said, my first question is: 1) what is the nature of the family history material posted on your website? If it is merely facts about deceased individuals: names, dates, places and links from one generation to the next--these are not copyrightable. No one can "own" his ancestors or control what other people do with facts. You can only copyright original creative wording and there is nothing your created or that is original about facts. A person may have discovered a fact but he didn't create it and he doesn't own it. So legally, if only facts are involved, it wouldn't matter whether the other person had the information on his website first or not. Of course, ethically, if the person who submitted the data to you lifted it from the other person's research he should have given the other person credit as being the source. Also, if more than just facts are involved -- for instance a narrative family history with original notes -- then there could be copyright to the original content. 2) Has the person complaining to you given you evidence or proof that he did have the material on his website prior to the date the other person submitted the data to you? In other words, can he prove in any way that the data was originally posted by him and isn't your submitter's data? On a related note: have you asked your submitter where he got the data? 3) Do you routinely ask that your submitters submit only data to which they either hold copyright or they have permission to submit (if the data is other than facts)? If not--you should. Joan ************************************** Get a sneak peek of the all-new AOL at http://discover.aol.com/memed/aolcom30tour