Copyright - where are we?

[Mogsmum]

From my years in the publishing of books, film, artwork and latterly video, CDs, DVDs, we always gave this advice to everyone..

' .. you must always assume that the copyright on everything is owned by someone, somewhere until or unless you can categorically prove otherwise.'

It is a popular misconception that merely changing the odd word, font, colour or context is sufficient and, as has already been said, the operative words here are  '.. re-supplied or distributed .. in any form .. '.   

I've long since given up keeping account of the number of people who've tried to get around it by suggesting that this or that doesn't count, the answer is - it does.  It is the original from (or failing that, the form in which it has been supplied to you), which is the subject of copyright and, in 30 years of argument I've found only one exception - the recording of an 'accidental sound track' (when we were filming in St. James's Park and subsequently, the band in Wellington Barracks could be - intermittently - heard on the soundtrack, clearly rehearsing a Beatles number).

A 'Janet and John' (or to correctly reference it - Janet & John Series by Mabel O'Donnell, Rona Munro, Muriel Warwick, and Florence and Margaret Hoopes, published by James Nisbet and Co Ltd., 1 Jan 1949 and Janet and John: Here We Go - Janet & John Books - by Mabel O'Donnell and Rona Munro, published by Summersdale Publishers 3rd Sep 2007) guide to copyright can be found at -
 
http://www.cla.co.uk/copyright_information_aboutcopyright.php

[suttontrust]

Jean was, I think, puzzled about how you can quote from other sources without breaching copyright.  The answer, of course, is that you quote - that is, you put the words in speech marks and say where the quote comes from.  What you can't do is lift someone's words without acknowledgment.
But that isn't the point I'm arguing, and I don't think it was what Jean was asking.  Facts are not copyrightable.

[Guy Etchells]

Members of this forum and other forums seem to be confused as to what is in the Public Domain.
Publishing a record or making it available to public view is not placing that record in the public domain the author still holds the copyright to the work even though the public can view it.
For a record or work to be in the Public Domain the author (or copyright holder if different) has to provide a written statement relinquishing copyright or the period of copyright has to expire.


When a book is republished (this includes those that are scanned) the new copyright period last 15 years from the date of publication. That does not mean other people can not republish the same book but it does mean that nobody may make a copy of the republished book to make another republication. They would have to obtain a copy of the original work and republish that.

It is often stated that facts cannot be copyright. This is not correct in the UK and Europe.
The 1997 Database Act made compilations of facts and indeed individual facts (in certain circumstances) copyrightable.
Any compilation of facts falls under the 1997 Act, included in this Act is a section that prohibits –
“(2) For the purposes of this Part, the repeated and systematic extraction or re-utilisation of insubstantial parts of the contents of a database may amount to the extraction or re-utilisation of a substantial part of those contents.”

This means that a person offering look-ups is in breach of the copyright. If they are in breach of the copyright by copying individual facts (insubstantial parts) then individual facts are by definition copyright.
Cheers
Guy

[suttontrust]

Thanks, Guy, for the info about the Database Act.  Has it ever been tested?  A lawyer would argue, no doubt, about "systematic".
As for Public Domain, we're aware of how copyright works in that respect, but again what is a "record"? 
I would be really interested in any known court cases which have tested the legislation in regard to published databases.  NOT because I advocate breaching it, but because at the moment people are running scared unnecessarily.

[MKG]

Gosh - glad I mentioned legalese earlier.

My personal details and those of my family can be quoted willy-nilly by me and my family. The fact that those details are held on a government-sponsored database cannot alter that fact. Neither the government nor any other organisation hold any form of copyright on my personal details or those of my family. Nor can the government or any other organisation even CLAIM to hold any such copyright - no amount of fancy legal footwork can alter that. Terms and conditions of use may only specify prohibitions which are legal in the first place. If any organisation ever tried to tell me that I had no rights over the use of my personal information, I'd sue 'em in a court of law and WIN.

In this case - genealogical data, rather than any other form of material - no copyright can possibly be held over the information in its raw state. It IS held over the manner in which the information is stored, so DON'T COPY AND PASTE. If the owners of the database can prove that a direct copy has been perpetrated, then they can successfully sue for breach of copyright. If raw data has been extracted AND THE ORGANISATION WAS NOT THE OWNER OF THAT INFORMATION IN THE FIRST PLACE, then there is no breach of copyright case to answer.

It's really simple - my name is MY name. I hereby, by the way, freely give anyone who wants to the right to reproduce it. So, if anyone comes across my name in a database, you're OK. But do retype it just to keep the profiteers off your back.

As I pointed out in my original post, there is no copyright over the basic text of the Bible - for the sake of argument, the King James Version. I can perectly legally re-type the whole thing, put it into book form and sell it. There would still be no copyright over the basic text of the Bible.

Oh, incidentally. No matter when it was gathered, data on names, birthdates, addresses and occupations is by nature in the public domain. It cannot be taken back out of the public domain.

[Guy Etchells]

It's really simple - my name is MY name. I hereby, by the way, freely give anyone who wants to the right to reproduce it. So, if anyone comes across my name in a database, you're OK. But do retype it just to keep the profiteers off your back.

This shows just how wrong people can be.
Try opening a cafe and calling it McDondalds (assuming you are called McDonalds) and see how quickly you are sued and lose.

Such cases have been fought and lost creating legal precedents.
Cheers
Guy

[drodgers34]

I tend to think (with no legal authority whatsoever) tha rootscat offering lookups is more cause for trouble then republishing information obtained from sites such as ancestry.

I am aware that werelate.org (one of the more popular wiki sites) claims to have permission to republish (in wiki form anyway) images of documents obtained from ancestry.

Indeed people posting information regularly do.

As a WIKI the posting of info is incidental to a particular genealogy but as it is collaborative you could percieve that at some point the info on a particular parish could be next to complete - and therefore cold be described as systematic.

It will be interesting to see what the reaction will be when browsers start accessing such sites rather than those such as ancestry - although you can compile a complete model of a parixsh within ancestry.

I assume Ancestry would then obtain their own wiki-like functionality in the same way as google has

[GrahamH]

<snip>
I would be really interested in any known court cases which have tested the legislation in regard to published databases.  NOT because I advocate breaching it, but because at the moment people are running scared unnecessarily.

See Here for examples of case law. The closest case to our subject area is probably Jobsearch Ltd v. Relational Designers Ltd.

Graham

[suttontrust]

Graham, that really is nowhere near our subject.  There, the database consisted of CVs, which obviously were original creations, not the sort of items of fact we deal in.  So I assume it's never been tested by any of the genealogy firms.