We've always been told that doing blanket lookups violated fair usage, and this has been around rootsweb for a long time - years - Part of fair usage concerns the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work. Better to err on the side of the compiler/author, wouldn't you think? We all need individuals to be willing to take their time and place records into some form that will be available to us all.....where would we, as genealogists, be without them?...but when people feel it is okay to use large portions of the information they compiled, simply because they can, then we're all in trouble. So, perhaps it's actually a moral problem, too..is it fair to undermined these compilers simply because we can? We all need them. I realize that the names would be the same, whether taken from the original records, or from what someone published, but the difference is WHERE you are giving the info from.....if the original records, then no problem, but that's not the same as taking them from a compilation someone spent a great deal of time and effort on. From: "Mark Rowden" <mrowden@comcast.net> To: "'Sandra Ferguson'" <ferg@ntelos.net>; <VANORTHU-L@rootsweb.com> Sent: Thursday, July 24, 2003 10:01 AM Subject: RE: [VANORTHU-L] N'umberld Order Bks. 1 & 2 ? Please believe me when I say that I'm not trying to be rude here. It just sparked by curiosity because I'm a trademark attorney and I've never heard of that before -- and I've never really thought about it. My profession and my hobbies have intersected. Do you know where you got this from? It seems to me that it is not be a copyright violation to ask for all of a surname. The asker is not violated anything here because the request can never expose copyrighted materials. However, if the replier just subscribed the entire section -- word for word, page for page -- that might be a copyright violation. But, the author cannot have copyright protection on facts, especially public and historical ones. So, if the replier just related the facts (as I did previously) that does not violate the copyright laws. Public, historical facts can be disseminated freely. I believe one example in law school (I also teach - but not copyright, I teach contracts) is that you can take a recipe out of a recipe book and forward it along. You can't, however, copy the form of the book, ie. several pages of recipes. I would think that this is the same thing. Also, a friend of mine was an attorney on a recent case where a city in Texas got third party association to write a model code (or a section of it). The city then enacted the model code, word for word. The author declared that the code was protected under copyright laws. Defendant in that case had a website with public information. He took the code and published it on his website - word for word, page by page. Author sued. The appellate court said that it was not a violation of copyright to put the code on the website since the words were public facts when enacted by the city's lawmakers. The US Supreme Court denied to hear the case so the website owner won. Again, I see copying public records as the same thing. If the author took the records, word for word, from the public records -- they can not have copyright protection on those words, and -- it they copy the entire public record, they cannot claim a copyright protection on the order. However, if they take the public record and reword it, they now can claim copyright protection on those words -- but not the facts. So, do you know where you got this from? I'd like to investigate it further - to satisfy my own curiosity. Thanks,