ALDALLAS-L Archives

Archiver > ALDALLAS > 2001-03 > 0984495723


From: "B.J. Smothers" <>
Subject: [ALDALLAS-L] ADMIN: Family Discovery site
Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 10:02:03 -0500
In-Reply-To: <001601c0ab32$5dbdacc0$d2830b3f@oemcomputer>


Dear Listers,

This is the 2nd or 3rd time that this alert has circulated among the
genealogical community and, no doubt, it will go around again (but I
sincerely hope not). Boy, has this site gotten a lot of free publicity!
Were it not for the well-intentioned listmembers that forward this sort of
thing to every list they subscribe to, familydiscovery.com might have
remained unknown. It's unbelievable how much panic has spread among
genealogists over the existence of this site.

People, it is just a search engine. If folks want to save themselves some
time and it's worth $8.00/month to them to do so, let them spend money for
LINKS to data they can get for free. It's their choice and their $$$$.
Family Discovery makes the nature of it's service very clear. Here is it's
own disclaimer:

Disclaimer:
• FamilyDiscovery.com pages contains EXTERNAL links which are not owned or
maintained by Family Discovery.
This is merely a search engine that takes you directly to the information
skipping all the time consuming steps

So stop worrying about the site's owner stealing data. There's no crime in
LINKING to anything on the web, for free or fee. And puh-leeze DO NOT pass
this alert on to every list you subscribe to. Stop publicizing it!

Thank you,

B.J. Smothers
Listowner ALDALLAS-L, ALWILCOX-L

----------
At 02:23 PM 3/12/01 -0600, you wrote:
>I received this on my Hill list at rootsweb thought I would pass it on, I
>have no personal knowledge of these people.
>
>I took a minute out of our volunteer typing time to check this site
>out.
>http://www.familydiscovery.com/
>
>It is a fraudulent site because a membership gives you links to our
>free sites. You do not have to pay to get to any site in USGenWeb
>Right here, there is no charge to get to all the counties in USGenWeb.
>
>We are all hardworking volunteers to have genealogy information
>free for researchers.
>
>I have found links to our Macoupin civil war rosters, censuses,
>which we spent many hours of volunteer time now to have unknowing
>researchers pay a membership to click on a link to view our work.
>Macoupin County ILGenWeb volunteers have put over 1400 pages of
>free information and continuing to work to get more pages up.
>
>If any person finds our complete work in their membership, please
>notify me. Please pass this information onto any list. Let's try to
>keep these ripoffs from making their pile of money from our
>volunteer work.
>
>Please pass this onto any list you might be on. Hopefully, this
>site will be removed soon if not sooner.
>
><snip>

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