This looks legit? Do you think it will pass? Are we going to be out of
business??
Date: Sun, 14 Mar 2004 21:38:10 -0700
From: W David Samuelsen <dsam(a)sampubco.com>
Subject: [USGW-Discuss] Proposed Legislation MUST BE STOPPED!
To: USGENWEB-DISCUSS-L(a)rootsweb.com
Please circulate to as many as appropriate.
This is from Dick Eastman and I read the Wired News as well - this is
extreme dangerous and very anti-genealogy. Please note the companies
behind this are the notorious:
1. Reed Elseiver, owner of the LexisNexis
2. Westlaw
3. Software and Information Industry Association
Opponents
1. Yahoo
2. Google
3. American Association of Libraries
4. a host of technology and financial services companies such as
Verizon, Bloomberg, Charles Schwab
Please note the original bill was introduced 8 Oct 2003 while we
were sleeping.
Culprits sponsoring the bill:
Howard Coble, North Carolina 6th District - Republican
David Hobson, Ohio 7th District - Republican
James Greenwood, Pennsylvania 8th District - Republican
W. "Billy" Tauzin, Louisiana 3rd District - Conservative Republican
F. James Sensenbrenner, Wisconsin 5th District - Republican, Chair of
House Judiciary Committee (the committee passed it out.)
Robert Wexler, Florida 19th District - Democrat
Michael R. Turner, Ohio 3rd District - Republican
Rob Portman, Ohio 2nd District - Republican
William Delahunt, Massachusetts 10th District -
Lamar Smith, Texas 21st District
You can check this out and send messages:
http://www.house.gov/MemNameSearch.html
- Proposed Legislation Would Wreak Havoc for Genealogists
A new bill before the U.S. Congress proposes to overturn one of the most
fundamental concepts of the present copyright laws. If passed, facts would
become copyrighted for the first time in U.S. history.
The Database and Collections of Information Misappropriation Act (HR3261)
would make it a crime for anyone to copy and redistribute a substantial
portion of data collected by commercial database companies and list
publishers. At first, that sounds like a good idea. However, a bit more
thought shows that nobody would be able to republish stock quotes,
historical health data, sports scores, or voter lists. In fact, a lot of
genealogy information could not be republished.
If passed, Google and all the other search engines would be crippled,
probably driven out of business. These are online databases that collect
information, or facts, from other online sites so that the user can
quickly find the information they seek. If Google and the others are not
allowed to collect facts that are now copyrighted, how will they be able
to index the Web for you?
Art Brodsky, spokesman for public advocacy group Public Knowledge, says
the bill would let anyone drop a fact into a database or a collection of
materials and claim monopoly rights to it. This would contradict the core
principle of the Copyright Act, which states that mere information and
ideas cannot be protected works.
Let's say that a commercial genealogy service such as
Ancestry.com or
OneGreatFamily.com publishes the fact that your great-great-grandparents
had a child named John. Once that "fact" has been published by any
commercial service, that original publisher would hold the copyright on
the fact, and no one else would be allowed to publish it again. The Family
History Library, the New England Historic Genealogical Society,
Genealogical Publishing Company, and others would be prohibited from
publishing that information again in any of their online or printed works.
In fact, private individuals would similarly be barred from publishing the
information in their own derivative works. If a commercial site publishes
a fact about your ancestors, you would not be able to place that fact on
your own Web site or in any book or report that you give to others.
The language in this proposed legislation contradicts the core principle
of the present copyright acts, which state that mere information and ideas
cannot be protected works.
You can read more about this proposed legislation in Wired News at
http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,62500,00.html
What Do You Think? Comments and discussion are available on this
newsletter's Discussion Board at:
http://www.eogn.com/discussionboard