From: "Roger Swafford" <sagitta56(a)mchsi.com>
Subject: Re: [USGW-Discuss] Proposed Legislation MUST BE STOPPED!
Date: Mon, 15 Mar 2004 16:43:36 -0600
Hi David,
I think your referring to H.R.3261 which may be viewed at
http://thomas.loc.gov/home/thomas.html just enter HR3261 in the search
engine. There are two versions, the current being as reported HR3261RH
Of particular interest are the exclusions, which lead me to think we have
nothing to worry about.
Roger
----- Original Message -----
From: "W David Samuelsen" <dsam(a)sampubco.com>
To: <USGENWEB-DISCUSS-L(a)rootsweb.com>
Sent: Sunday, March 14, 2004 10:38 PM
Subject: [USGW-Discuss] Proposed Legislation MUST BE STOPPED!
> 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