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Hi Pat,
I just read your e-mail and wanted to tell you I understand your
frustration! I have run into this a number of time and I'm sure we will see
it in the future.
A lot of the smaller and in this case bigger Genealogical Societies are
getting their legs sort of kicked out from under them. Many of the folks
that belong to these Societies are not familiar with Computers much less the
Internet and Copyright laws etc. etc. Some cannot fathom the idea of
putting up all this information for public use and consumption. And yes,
you are right -- a lot of the Societies do make their money from research
for people.
PLEASE -- reconsider 'pulling' your wonderful site off the web. Don't back
down on you efforts just because someone vented a little steam about what
they think is "their" record's. Most of what you mentioned in your e-mail
from what I read would be considered public domain in the copyright business
if you were to use the names and information transcribed from the books you
talked about and placed it on the web.
IF though you actually copied the information verbatim from the books that
the Society wrote/compiled. Then you would have to worry about copyright
infringement.
I have compiled a number of Cemetery listings for Kootenai County and have
posted some of them on my GenWeb pages. I have also used sources from our
local Genealogical Society (books that they have compiled) and from
Newspapers, and actually from tromping through the Cemeteries. The posting
that I do have on-line, by-law are copyrighted by me. By this virtue, no one
should be able to duplicate my pages. HOWEVER, since my pages contain
facts, listing and public domain information, any or all of it can be
listed by someone else BUT not in my exact format. Sounds strange, but
perfectly legal.
Copyright laws are VAGUE. Please just remember that they deal with the
written word and format. Facts, listings and public knowledge information
in not included.
A good source on copyright law is:
http://lcweb.loc.gov/copyright/
Again though, please re-consider pulling your site. It would be a shame to
see all your nice work disappear.
Jim Makovec
Kootenai County Idaho
James H. Makovec
Commercial URL:
http://www.makodon-east.com/
Home Page:
http://www.ior.com/jmakovec/makovec.htm
Genealogy:
http://www.ior.com/~jmakovec/
"Seen it all, done it all, can't remember most of it."
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From: "Pat Roloff" <parco(a)cyberhighway.net>
To: <IDGEN-L(a)rootsweb.com>
Subject: [IDGEN-L] Re: Washington County
Date: Tue, 9 Mar 1999 14:18:00 -0800
Message-ID: <199903092213.OAA05826(a)bl-3.rootsweb.com>
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I have just returned from the Idaho Historical and Genealogical Library. I
wanted to copy the Cemetery records for Cambridge, Salubria and the
transcriptions from the Hillcrest Cemetery in Weiser that contain some
birth and death information. I was not allowed to copy them until I
received permission from the Idaho Genealogical Society who may or may not
have done the transcriptions. (It is very confusing as to where some of the
records came from. Some may have been transcribed locally and then recopied
from the originals by the Idaho Genealogy Society in 1950-60).
The Librarian called an IGS board member contact for me who happened to be
on her way to the Library. I waited for her to arrive and explained who I
was and what I wanted to copy and why. She answered " please answer me why
in the world we would allow you to do that". She was very concerned about
money, stating several times that researching for people was the way they
made their money. I was also warned that "someone is going to get their
butt sued off over this" as "copy writes are good forever" and "some
board
members are very upset over this issue". I don't know if the Idaho
Genealogical Society has publications for sale or if they just "make their
money" doing research. This 'lady' did give me permission to put the
Society's address, phone number and research fee on my site. I have
attempted to locate a site that would steer me to what they do offer but
all links offered for Idaho at
http://www.rootsweb.com/~usgw/links/idaho.htm came up 404 - Object Not
Found.
I would note that in the Province of Ontario, Canada, the Genealogy
Societies have submitted their cemetery transcription indexes to a Web site
called Ontario Cemetery Finding Aid. Once a name of interest is found and a
cemetery noted, a researcher can then order the transcription from the
publishing Society. All are served. It would seem in Idaho, you must pay a
researcher from the Society $10 an hour to search all Idaho State cemetery
records to try and locate a person who may or may not be buried here.
Washington County has been removed from the Internet. Someone else can "get
their butt sued off". Nor do I need to be upset by ignorant people such as
the representative of the Idaho Genealogical Society I definately did not
have the 'pleasure' of speaking with today.
Sincerely, Pat Roloff
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