Owning
Your Ancestors (Copyright Rights)
People should not
be so quick to judge the publishing of information as being "their"
info. After one genealogist received some research material from a 5-times-removed
"cousin", she went ahead on her own and researched their joint
line, then published her findings on the Internet. This
"cousin" immediately wrote her, accusing her of publishing
without the accuser's permission. The accused sent her "cousin"
her original sources from her own research. The names and relationships
ended up the same as the "cousin's", but this lady had done
her own research. She never heard from "the cousin"since --
neither an apology.
No one can own
their ancestors or the uncopyrightable facts about them such as their
names, birth dates and places of birth, spouses' names, dates and places
of marriages, death dates and so on. No one.
Facts, like ancestors,
do not belong to anyone; quite the opposite, facts may be freely included
in anyone's research. Not only that but anyone can compile a family
tree about any family -- being related to that family in any way is
not a prerequisite. Even if you are the first one to learn that your
great grandparents were married on the "Black Nymph" on their
way to Australia in 1843, you cannot "own" that fact. It does
not matter how much time and money it cost to discover a fact or facts,
it will always be uncopyrightable.
Of course, polite
genealogists acknowledge and give credit to those who have been kind
enough to share research information. There will always be novice family
historians among us who have yet to learn how to record where they found
their information or to give proper credit to whoever may have provided
them the whatever information.
See "I
Want It All!", also "Citation
Corner Index Page", and "The
Ethics and Etiquette of Sharing".
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