Genealogy Chat

These may always have been part of the guidelines, but they don't seem to be an area most people are considering...

“Be aware that this is a public forum – don’t communicate anything that is, or could be considered to be, defamatory, false, unreliable or misleading about any business or thing. Don’t post anything that infringes, or might be considered to infringe, anyone’s copyright, trade mark or other intellectual property rights – it’s easy to take material that belongs to others, but that doesn’t make it right. Don’t advertise, or use the service for any business or commercial or charitable purpose.” This means, presumably, that: 1) We can’t be rude about Ancestry, 1901 Census, Familysearch or any other site whose less than accurate information drives us to exasperation 2) We can’t do cut and paste from such sites or cds, and are probably on equally dodgy ground posting the results from look ups in indexes in book or fiche form. These are copyright publications, produced by small organisations, which rely on the income from their sales to generate the funds to produce more indexes. 3) We can’t mention such publications, family history fairs or open days as this might be construed as advertising. Views, please?

1) There are ways of saying things; if you suggest that "Ancestry are a load of thieving b******s" then that is probably overstepping the mark, but saying "a lot of the transcriptions on Ancestry are cr*p" is a statement of the truth. 2) All of the *information* in censuses and parish registers is, as far as I know, in the public domain. The images may be subject however to copyright. If you get a copy of a census page from a Records Office, you have to fill in a copyright form (couldn't tell you what it says though!). Copyright conditions on census disks say images may not be reproduced for publication or profit, nor may the disks be copied. Again, no limitations on the content that I can see. 3) There is more of a fuzzy line here, which means that GR, in theory, could remove ANYTHING which they choose to construe as advertising. I imagine that they would turn a blind eye however to the normal sort of imformation which enthusiasts pass between themselves which is devoid of a profit motive. My views.

Re copyright - i understand that you can make one copy of an image for your own personal use.( this also applies to copies of maps and book extracts that you make in your local library according to my local) Dont know where that leaves us re. sending images via e - mail ? Perhaps GR could advise ? Elaine.

GR would not have put up a Record Office board if they were not happy about us promoting certain sites, suppliers, resources we have bought etc. Nor are they daft enough to assume that they can ban any mention of the above. If you were to post a topic advertising you would do certain look-ups for money, then the thread would be deleted. Technically the rules would forbid us mentioning sites such as familysearch and Ancestry; in practice, GR are not in direct competition with them and know that deleting those threads would be shooting themselves in both feet.

Elaine What you say about copying in libraries is probably true. As regards what we send to each other in e-mails, that is certainly none of GR's business (nor would they want it to be!).