GENEALOGY-DNA-L Archives

Archiver > GENEALOGY-DNA > 2012-02 > 1330507031


From: "Elise Friedman" <>
Subject: Re: [DNA] My Heritage
Date: Wed, 29 Feb 2012 04:17:11 -0500
References: In-Reply-To:


Janet,

First of all, MyHeritage did not “come in and copy” anything. It was provided to them by Family Tree DNA, as a result of their partnership, to enable them to integrate the Family Tree DNA products into their website.

Second, the ENTIRE CONTENTS of your private website has not been given to MyHeritage. The ONLY information that is being displayed on the MyHeritage site is the few paragraphs that you entered into the Description field on the Project Profile page of your Family Tree DNA project. This text is stored in FTDNA’s database because YOU entered it there. Nobody went to your private website and copied your text without your permission.

The goal of this partnership is to bring in new business to Family Tree DNA and bring in new members to OUR surname projects. MyHeritage has a *HUGE* European customer base, and project admins are always complaining that they can’t get enough members from the UK or elsewhere in Europe. Well here’s your chance, and you’re going to shoot yourself in the foot by complaining about your project description being shown to encourage new people to purchase a kit and join your project???

Yes, there probably should be a disclaimer at the bottom of the project pages at MyHeritage explaining that the info is from Family Tree DNA and is copyrighted to the respective project admins. We can ask FTDNA to please make that happen. But please don’t act like this is some rogue company who is stealing your project information and your project members – that’s the complete opposite of what is happening here.

FTDNA forges partnerships with other companies to help grow their business, and these partnerships can only be beneficial for our surname projects.

Elise


Feed: Rootsweb.com RSS Feed for GENEALOGY-DNA
Posted on: Wednesday, February 29, 2012 1:57 AM
Author: "Janet Crain" <>
Subject: [DNA] My Heritage

Elise; With all due respect, it is not "a good thing" for this company to
come in and copy the entire contents of 9 year copyrighted websites and
present it it as their intellectural property.

I deeply resent this. And it is illegal.

Janet Lewis Crain


MyHeritage has just recently partnered with Family Tree DNA to sell Family
Tree DNA tests. This partnership was announced on many genealogy & genetic
genealogy mailing lists and blogs just a few weeks ago. Here's the
announcement on GeneaPress:

http://www.geneapress.com/2012/02/myheritage-brings-dna-testing-to-global
html

(If you aren't keeping up on genealogy industry news, you should be. The
GeneaPress blog is a very good one to watch, since it covers a wide variety
of genealogy news. There are also several good blogs devoted to genetic
genealogy.)

Information about all FTDNA surname projects has been provided to MyHeritage
by Family Tree DNA, for display on their website, to help encourage
MyHeritage customers to purchase DNA tests and participate in surname
projects. The text for each project comes directly from your project’s
“Project Profile” page at Family Tree DNA. The fact that you chose to use
the same text on your private website is not MyHeritage's problem. They
didn’t go around to private websites copying text.

This partnership is a *good* thing for surname projects. FTDNA has several
such partnerships, and MyHeritage is just the newest. They are also not the
only partner that displays FTDNA project info on their own website -- iGenea
has done so for many years already.

Elise



This thread: