Carol Montrose wrote:
Even if you re-sort etc...you're using the society's
work...not the
newspapers...If you go directly to the newspaper and get the information,
that is one thing but if you use the work a society does (AND is selling in
the case of their publications, or is intended for DUES-PAYING members..)
and give it away....that is another situation....
If you took a daily newspaper and copied it and re-arranged the pages, and
started selling it on the corner or giving them away so people wouldn't buy
the newspapers....do you think the newspapers would sit by & allow it?
If the newspaper printed the fact that the sun is going to rise at 6:30 am
and will set at 8:12 pm, you could reprint that because it is a fact. If
they write an editorial on the policies of the Federal Reserve Board, you
could only reprint that within fair use guidelines because that can be
copyrighted. If they published a schedule of solar events for the next 1000
years, you could not photocopy the information and distribute it--their
presentation is protected. You could take all of the information and
reprint it yourself. You don't have to recalculate the facts yourself.
From the government copyright website
http://lcweb.loc.gov/copyright/circs/circ1.html:
WHAT IS NOT PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT?
Several categories of material are generally not eligible for federal
copyright protection. These include among others:
Works consisting entirely of information that is common property and
containing no original authorship (for example: standard calendars, height
and weight charts, tape measures and rulers, and lists or tables taken from
public documents or other common sources)
I believe that speaks for itself. You may not like the fact that the work a
genealogy society does in compiling public data cannot be copyrighted, but
it is the law.
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