Good morning Jan and Happy New Year. Sorry I joined the discussion late. What's the old saying - cutting off your nose to spite your face? Something like that? Anyway, I found one of my entire cemeteries on Find A Grave with all of my notes included. I diligently perused each photo to make sure they were mine, right down to the blades of grass. Every one of them had this lady's name on them. Funny that she had written to me asking permission and I had told her no, but there they were. So I joined F.A.G. just so I could post. When I went to her profile she had many thanks from people about her contributions. So I posted a message saying that all of the photos had been stolen from my website and reminded her of copyright laws. I also told her what I think of people that steal others work and put their name on it. She was so embarrassed, all of the photos came down immediately, and I received 6 messages thanking ME for doing the work and posting the data to MY website. Bottom line, go ahead and join, just so you have posting rights, and let people know when your work has been stolen. When other people realize that they will be caught, maybe this stealing will cease. Karen -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Jan Cortez Sent: Tuesday, December 29, 2009 7:45 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [STATE-COORD] Your Guidance is Requested - Cemetery Photos Personally, I wouldn't give FAG the time of day. I browsed their website a few days ago to find that many of my cemetery transcriptions have been copied from the MI Archives and/or my websites. The one I am VERY positive of, because it is not only a transcription, but also research that I did on death certificates noting persons buried there that did not have stones. 1560 of them. No mention of the original person - ME - who went out and did all the work. NOPE - it all belongs to one of their top 50 contributors. Now, if I sat on my butt every day and took all the transcriptions off from others websites, I could be the #1 contributor to FAG. NOT! First of all, let me say that I know that dates and names are not copyrightable. So, that is not the point, however, if they can copy all my work, does that mean it is open season on all their transcriptions that I can copy to my websites? I probably wouldn't have given it much thought other than FAG stirred up such a stink over some work we had on the MI Tombstone Project saying that we stole their work and put it on our website. The guy who contributed it to us after he sent it to FAG was all upset and I finally just removed it. I managed to get the email of the guy who took my work and told him what I thought, but, unless I become a member of FAG, I can't write them and tell them what I think. And ya know what - it will be a sorry day in you know where before I ever become a member of that organization. Definitely ticked here. <sigh> Jan