Thanks Karen; that clarifies.
My druthers of late, as suggested by somebody (don’t remember) from leadership (don’t
remember from where), is to remove the copyright statement and the at sign from all my
pages in all my sites. I’m gradually doing it. I now put a quote These Pages are Willed to
the XXGenWeb unquote which basically means, if I die before I wake, this all belongs to
the state so they can freely do with it what they want; i.e., wipe it out, maintain it,
give it to another CC, etc. This was suggested to me by a state coordinator back in 2002.
It does not change anything in the way of copyright rules/laws; it only reflects what the
current author of the site would like to have done with the site if something removes the
site coordinator.
Also at the bottom of each of my pages I have a date – followed by XXGenWeb which reflects
the range of years for how long this page has been placed here by XXGenWeb, i.e.,
2008-2015 MNGenWeb Clay County.
Mike
Clay Co
From: Karen De Groote
Sent: Friday, March 20, 2015 5:34 AM
To: Mike (Dino) Peterson
Cc: List MNGenWeb
Subject: Re: [MNGEN] USGenWeb Requirement #3-Copyright
Posting a copyright is NOT required, only adhering to the policy. My
post said IF you post a copyright, this is what you should do. I like
to copyright for the state project but some people do not mess with
copyright and that is fine. Hope this makes it less confusing!
Thanks Mike,
Karen
On Fri, Mar 20, 2015 at 12:37 AM, Mike (Dino) Peterson <geanie(a)cox.net> wrote:
I find this subject terribly confusing and as evidenced by the
discussions
of late on USGenWeb Discuss, I certainly am not alone. From our bylaws and
guidelines it is very clear to me that as a coordinator I must comply with
copyright laws/rules, as confusing as they are and as argumentative they’ve
been within the project. However, I cannot find anywhere in our bylaws/rules
that states I have to ‘post’ a copyright statement on my website. If that
were true, I would think USGenWeb or the State would have a required
‘statement’ that would be consistent across the project. As it is, when a
statement is posted on a website it’s a statement that reflects the
interpretation of the coordinator. If I am missing this requirement for
posting, I would certainly like to be directed to it. I think Karen’s note
is an excellent note and the best description I’ve seen as a guideline. I
just don’t find where a posting is a requirement.
Sincerely,
Mike
From: Karen De Groote via
Sent: Thursday, March 19, 2015 6:09 PM
To: List MNGenWeb
Subject: [MNGEN] USGenWeb Requirement #3-Copyright
As promised, the separate message on copyright.
3. You are required to adhere to the USGenWeb copyright policy. IF
your index page contains a copyright statement it must be a current
copyright so if the year is 2015, your INDEX page needs to say 2015.
A copyright is as simple as, ie: " © Karen De Groote and Individual
submitters, 2015" The USGenWeb Bylaws, section X, deals with
copyright of our pages and you should be familiar with this section.
http://www.usgenweb.org/volunteers/bylaws.shtml.
If you want to read more about copyright you can visit this page:
http://www.usgenweb.org/volunteers/copyright.shtml.
Your other pages do not need to carry a current copyright. If you
made them and posted copyright at the time they were made, you can
leave them be. Current copyright on the index page provides coverage
for all of your pages.
It would be far better to remove a copyright statement rather than
leave an out of date one on your index page. You want visitors to
know you are there and current.
If you want to use a good copyright, you are all welcome to use the
one I use on my counties and edit it for your own counties. Having a
copyright on your page makes protection of your work so much easier.
Many major servers respect copyrights and if someone takes your web
pages and posts them as theirs on a server, that server will shut them
down immediately. I know this happened with GoDaddy recently and have
heard other big companies will respect a posted copyright.
My copyright is worded as this, in small font, at the bottom of my
index page. You may use it on your page as long as you change the
county name:
Copyright © MNGenWeb 2015
MNGenWeb Stearns County: In keeping with our policy of providing free
information on the internet, data may be used by non-commercial
researchers, as long as this message remains on all copied material.
These electronic pages may not be reproduced in any format for profit,
nor for presentation in any form by any other organization or
individual. Persons or organizations desiring to use this material for
purposes other than as stated above, must obtain express written
permission from the author, or the submitter and from the listed
county coordinator.
Thanks again, one and all!
Karen
ASC
Shirley
SC
Tim
SC
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