Well said. For more information regarding Copyrights, history, etc. the Library of Congress's web site http://www.loc.gov/ Has excellent information. The copyright laws changed a few years ago. Some things like official public records, census, land records, registered wills, books written before a certain date, etc. are public domain and therefore are not under the copyright law. You can include it in your research and you should document it in your files. How you use the information in your own words in your research is your material and can be copyrighted. Material on a web site is like a book because the person who set it is uses his or her personal talents to design it, and is under his or her copyright. The contents should reflect the work of the designer or have permission from the "author" of the material to present it on the site. Errors of various kinds occur in all information such as census, public records, books, etc. because handwriting often is hard to read. Styles change over time and penmanship varies from time to time even within an individuals lifetime. Some times people change the spelling of their name. And sometimes other people change it for you. My name spelling is common in East Tennessee, however else where in this great country it is not very common and is spelled many ways. The most common misspelling is Lester or Leona. And with a middle name of Mac that comes back Mae, I understand how record errors can occur and reoccur with out being corrected even with spell check. Leota ----- Original Message ----- From: "P McDonald" <mmcdonald3@houston.rr.com> To: <TNROANE-L@rootsweb.com> Sent: Saturday, November 23, 2002 11:30 AM Subject: [TNROANE] More on Publications While on this general subject, I would like to address a sore subjct. If you find a web site, message board, book, or other publication, or receive an E-mail from someone with family information in it, there is an implied copyright on that material. If you want to copy parts of the data into your database, it would be common courtesy to contact the author for permission, and to definitely show your source in anything you pass along. I have found Notes copied word for word from my web site plastered all over Rootsweb trees and other web sites, and I feel sure they have been submitted to World Family Tree CDs for commercial use. I have seen Notes that have included contents of E-mails that I am pretty sure came from Marj Watts, a professional researcher, for instance. Many, many sites have blurbs that I feel sure came from the Roane Heritage site, with no credits. It is true that noone has ownership of ancestors, or a list of ancestors. But some people have put a lot of time and effort into abstracting court records, interviewing elderly people, ferreting out Bible records and photographs, and then compiling the information into concise form. And we are are most grateful for that work. Most of these people are happy to share with individuals who just want to more about their family. But copying and posting such compiled data to a book or web site, for instance, is plagariasm. Rootsweb has rules about not using something one doesn't own, and the National Genelogical Society has Guidelines treating this subject that we all should review from time to time. Every How-to genealogy instruction I've ever seen emphasises the need for recording Source. On top of everything else, sometimes people blindly copy information that is wrong--perpetuating old "myths." That does not help anyone, although it might give bragging rights to those who want to say they have X thousand names in their file. Bottom line: If you didn't write it, it ain't yours! And besides, you lose credibility when others find out where you got it and didn't bother to check further. Pat McDonald ==== TNROANE Mailing List ==== Please do not post virus warnings to this list! ============================== To join Ancestry.com and access our 1.2 billion online genealogy records, go to: http://www.ancestry.com/rd/redir.asp?targetid=571&sourceid=1237