Deloris,
I imagine you did follow all the side-steps and mis-steps
before they actually gave in. The first version, that was
online less than 2 days, had every page cached and you could
not find the URL of the real page and it was only for paying
subscribers. That was dramatically different than what
Google does. Their first concession was to make it free but
even then the 2nd trial did not even allow you to know the
URL you were viewing. The third time up the flag pole, they
included the URL to the real pages. They then realized that
thousands of pages had been taken offline and every blog
that they had captured was showing pages designed to condemn
their actions. Finally, this morning, the entire database
was gone. It might have been a bit more logical if they had
only tried it with Rootsweb which they do own, but they
literally captured every site in the English speaking world.
The database included all the copyrighted material on every
college site and county historical or genealogy society in
the country as well. They could have gotten away with it if
they had done the ethical thing of letting the entire
internet community know they intended to deploy their bot
but they waited until they had captured the entire country,
both private and commercial, before announcing it publicly
and then it took a short while before they even gave the
name of the bot.
There was absolutely nothing that anyone could have done to
prevent this because it was done with utmost secrecy. From
what little I have learned, even Rootsweb was not told in
advance. Now, we do know that the process has been patented
and we can protect our data if we wish to do so. I for one
still feel I owe it to everyone who has submitted
copyrighted material to a site I host to protect their
material from commercial exploitation.
Nola
----- Original Message -----
From: "Deloris Williams" <delwilliams(a)insightbb.com>
To: <ncgenweb-discuss(a)rootsweb.com>
Sent: Thursday, August 30, 2007 8:05 PM
Subject: Re: [NCGENWEB-DISCUSS] Complaints from researchers
This might all prove to be a moot point, according to what
I read on Dick
Eastman's newsletter this morning,
Ancestry.com has
announced that they are
removing the database entirely. But I do think that their
initial database
has caused a big stir in the genealogy world that has
given us all food for
thought. Isn't the reason we put our information online
because we want
others to have access to this information for free? I can
understand it
when some of us are upset because they feel that Ancestry
is using our
information for their own profit. In a response to that,
Ancestry had
changed the database as a free one, not a paid one. The
point of the
database, they said, was to bring up online webpages that
might have
genealogy information. Being the devil's advocate here,
isn't that what we
want? Is this any different from any of our pages being
picked up by any
other search engine, such as Google, and only bringing
more genealogy
specific pages to researchers? I don't think this is the
last that we will
hear about it, because I am sure some other enterprising
company, if not
Ancestry again, will eventually come up with something
similiar. And I
think that we all need to calm down and take the time to
think about what it
is we want with our webpages.
Deloris
----- Original Message -----
From: "Sandy" <teylu(a)earthlink.net>
To: <ncgenweb-discuss(a)rootsweb.com>
Sent: Thursday, August 30, 2007 7:21 PM
Subject: Re: [NCGENWEB-DISCUSS] Complaints from
researchers
>
> And yet, you apparently didn't think it was important
> enough to post
> a message to our discuss list so that the rest of us
> could be aware
> of the situation with Ancestry, and that you were
> removing your
> pages.... which, by the way, many of us link to.
>
> Seems as if you might've let the rest of know.
>
>
> On Aug 30, 2007, at 7:04 PM, Nola Duffy wrote:
>
>> I posted the original message on my county pages because
>> I
>> felt that anyone hosting a family page, anywhere in the
>> country, should know that anything they had was now in
>> the
>>
Ancestry.com database.
>
>
> -------------------------------
> To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to
> NCGENWEB-DISCUSS-request(a)rootsweb.com with the word
> 'unsubscribe' without
> the quotes in the subject and the body of the message
>
>
> --
> No virus found in this incoming message.
> Checked by AVG Free Edition.
> Version: 7.5.484 / Virus Database: 269.12.12/979 -
> Release Date: 8/29/2007
> 8:21 PM
>
>
--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.5.484 / Virus Database: 269.12.12/979 - Release
Date: 8/29/2007 8:21 PM
-------------------------------
To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to
NCGENWEB-DISCUSS-request(a)rootsweb.com with the word
'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the
body of the message