Copyright - where are we?

[Gadget]

It seems that you are saying 'if you can't afford it, tough' It's not a very altruistic message, is it.

Maybe we should all be harder and less generous with our time and resources then.  I have spent thousands on my researches  but have also gone out of my way to help those who can't.

Gadget

[Erato]

It seems that you are saying 'if you can't afford it, tough' It's not a very altruistic message, is it.

And to those who live far away from the original source records they might like to see.

[Guy Etchells]

We might both have long hair but he's older than I am 

Graham

Some might say better looking as well

Seriously though, there is a fine line between being altruistic and being ripped off.

Most CD producers and many of the website owners mentioned do not really mind a person answering a query with information from their product.
The problem is some people take it too far and offer a look-up service.

What must be taken into consideration is some of those books and records cost hundreds if not thousands of pounds to buy. As a result the producer must sell a large number of CDs to recoup their costs.
Cheers
Guy

[Copyright-Editor]

In an ideal world, where everything was sweetness and light and no-one ever did anything to hurt or upset anyone else, or anything “wrong,” a policeman would not need to exist.     

Ideally, on RootsChat, we do not want to have a Copyright team: Trystan and Sarah did not initially see it as necessary to have one.  But after about 12 months, despite warning messages and pleas not to post copyright material, things got out of hand.  As a result of threatened legal action by a large publisher and copyright owner, the site was taken off-line for a couple of days while legal advice was taken.  Result, a copyright team, whose lot in life is to remove any obvious copyright breaches, usually from Ancestry, IGI, NBI, FindMyPast, FreeBMD – to name but a few.  There are many others.

It was also realised that some material was being used from other sources, like CDs, which is contrary to the licence agreements.  So notices appeared asking people not to post anything from a source where such an agreement would be breached. 

We cannot hope to know every commercially available database, so we do our best.  Our best is not perfect, but we do try.  We DO NOT knowingly allow offers from CDs.  We HAVE to trust people not to break the guidelines.  If we constantly question members, our lives would be even more unpleasant than they sometimes are already.

So, RootsChatters, if you have a CD, just think before you make blanket offers.  Does it say something like: “ You may not publish or sell any portion of the data in printed, electronic, or any other format, without prior written permission.”  If so, you would be breaking the licence agreement if you placed an offer here.  If it is noticed, it may be removed.  We do not condone anyone breaking such agreements and we should not have to justify its removal.

As with copyright, we err on the side of caution where look-up offers are concerned.  Sometimes this causes great angst to some people, but the alternative might be a successful legal challenge and RootsChat would be offline permanently.

RootsChat Copyright Team

[meles]

Thanks for doing a great - and difficult - job. 

meles

[GrahamH]

It seems that you are saying 'if you can't afford it, tough' It's not a very altruistic message, is it.

Maybe we should all be harder and less generous with our time and resources then.  I have spent thousands on my researches  but have also gone out of my way to help those who can't.

Gadget

Not very altruistic maybe - but true nevertheless. A more extreme example is that if more people had said "sorry, you can't afford it" we would not have had the problems caused by the sub-prime mortgage market and associated similar over-reliance on credit.

There is no need to be less generous with our time and resources (I have given plenty of my own time helping family and local history societies in various ways). Note my stress on the word our though - it is our right to do a we wish with our resources but not with those of others.

Thank you to Guy and Copyright-Editor for the posts above. I should hate to see Rootschat ruined by the selfish actions of a few people who refuse to act by the rules - but upset a big player sufficiently and that is the risk.

Graham

[Gadget]

I was under the impression that as more and more resources were coming online, the market for (data) CDs has dropped considerably.

I now have a collection of CDs that haven't been used for 3 or 4 years, by me or anyone else.


Gadget

[MKG]

I think you may be right, Gadget, and in the rather illogical way of things, your post made me suddenly think of another look-up source - the Oxford English Dictionary - and its purpose. I refer to it quite a bit in my writing (I bought the whopping great big version for a lot of money), and if I find the word or the definition I need, I use it without a second thought. That's because the OED is intended to be used in that manner and doesn't lay claim to ownership of the English language (but note that I do not scan the entire OED page and include that in my work. Nor do I copy all of their definitions to recreate a dictionary to pass off as my own).

There isn't one word or sequence of words in the OED which they could (or would try to) prevent me from using. The format and presentation  is the OED's - the words are in the public domain.

I know I keep flogging this distinction, but it seems that every time we approach the common sense outlook, we're flying off the point again. Census and BMD information was collected in the first place by religious and governmental organisations from the public domain, from which it cannot be made to disappear. It has always been in the public domain and will remain so for ever - anyone could have independently collected the same information and done whatever they liked with it EXCEPT say that the information was their private property. The ONLY thing on which those organisations ever held any kind of copyright was the way they wrote it down and the way they held it. Those are the things which can be sold - not the rights over the information.

There cannot be any argument about the truth of this. The data collected is known by the public before and at the point of collection, and that means public domain. That being the case, any modern organisation offering methods of searching that data can charge you for the privilege of looking by using their indexing and their software. That is the totality of what you are paying for, and any such organisation would be daft not to charge - after all, they would have invested heavily in storage and indexing.

But (or rather BUT BUT BUT) no such organisation has any right whatsoever to tell you what you can or cannot do with the data (as long as it isn't a "replica") once you have retrieved it because said data is not theirs to control. They can write Terms and Conditions until the cows come home, but no amount of wheedling, cajoling or threatening can alter the basic legal status of the raw data which, I'll say once more, is that of being in the public domain.

That really would be akin to the OED going to court in an attempt to make the majority of the people in this country stop using English (i.e. a stupid situation).

Of course, if we're going down Stupid Law Avenue, we may as well drag in the rather limp exceptions usually made for professional genealogists. Nice people though they no doubt are, they should have no more favours done than anyone else. But it does bring up the thought that if any looker-upper who does this stuff out of the goodness of their hearts on this site decided to turn professional and offered a ten-year free trial for every customer, then we wouldn't be having this discussion.

Ridiculous? No more so than pretending to own something which cannot be owned.

Mike

[JAP]

Hi C-E (whichever one  ),

...

It was also realised that some material was being used from other sources, like CDs, which is contrary to the licence agreements.  So notices appeared asking people not to post anything from a source where such an agreement would be breached. 

We cannot hope to know every commercially available database, so we do our best.  Our best is not perfect, but we do try.  We DO NOT knowingly allow offers from CDs.  We HAVE to trust people not to break the guidelines.  If we constantly question members, our lives would be even more unpleasant than they sometimes are already.

...

May I make a suggestion - and hope that others will contribute.

Many RC boards have child boards something like:
Lookup Offers
Lookup Requests
Lookup Requests Completed

How about if every board were to have similar child boards?  Some, no doubt, would have no posts but would that matter ...

It would certainly make it so much easier for CEs to monitor Lookup Offers to ensure that such offers were not breaching copyright and, if they were, to take appropriate action.

Do I hear you ask what about pre-existing Lookup Offers?

Perhaps some temporary RootsChat Moderators could be appointed (I guess helpful people would offer) to go through previous posts on a particular board and move Lookup Offers to the new Lookup board.

Best regards,

JAP
PS: Good grief, Mike!  I'm thinking of the many times I've quoted from my 2vol 1960s SOED dictionary!