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Archiver > ROOTS > 2001-06 > 148691


From: Robert Blair <>
Subject: [ROOTS-L] Re: Ancestry.com
Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2001 20:40:17 PST


** Reply to note from Mon, 11 Jun 2001 05:31:11 -0600

> X-Message: #25
> Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2001 02:36:47 -0400
> From: pifox <>
> Subject: Re: [ROOTS-L] Ancestry.com
>
> Speaking or thinking of ancestry.com or any other site that charge
> people to see public records such as census or news papers ,really
> sickens me. yet i can walk into a courthouse or city hall and pick out
> anyone's criminal record land and tax records etc: and read the entire
> thing word through word for free!!
>
> these sites are charging outrageous prices above all. i have a website
> with several pages and much info ,it didnt cost me a penny to put them
> together other than my monthly fee for internet service which is $15.99
> a month i dont need a webhost i am my own ,i don't charge anyone to read
> them. so where do the charges come from that these genealogy sites come
> up with? some one please educate me.
>

OK, I will try to educate you.

You say you have a web site with data available for free. How many
megabytes of data do you have? My guess is much less than 5mb. Those
sites that charge have many 1,000s of megabytes of data. Storage cost
money, a lot of money.

The computers to run a web site cost money. To run a large web site you
need main frame computers, PCs will not handle the work load. You are
paying 15.99 for a very small part of the computers that your ISP has.
They have many hundreds of people paying a like amount or more if they
have large storage requirements. Their business customers pay much more
than your 15.99.

How much data on your web site did you transcribe from the original
records? To put a census on the web you have to scan each and every image
and then have someone edit the image to clean it up so you can read it.
If you have indexes that can be searched you have to transcribe each name
in those images by hand. I know of no program that can read census
records and come up with a list of names. How many names can a person
transcribe in a day? It takes a long time and many people to create these
indexes, and people cost a lot of money.

The only site that I know that can offer some of these services for free
is the familysearch.org. The reason they can is because they have the
services of their church members for free. They have very low personal
costs. All the other sites need to pay their people a salary. RootsWeb
was (still is but not adding information) free. But they asked for
donations to cover their costs. Not enough people came forward with
donations so they had to sell.

So you get what you pay for. You get less on the free sites and more on
the pay sites. Even some of the pay sites have free areas. These free
areas may not have everything you want but they do give you some service.

Me I don't mind paying for a service that gives me what I want. I was a
subscriber to RootsWeb. I have subscribed to some that did not seem worth
it, so I canceled my subscription. You need to make up your own mind on
what you spend your money on. And since I am retired I need to be a bit
picky about who gets my money but I do not object to paying for a good
service.



Robert Blair

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