STEER-L Archives
Archiver > STEER > 2008-06 > 1213104663
From: "Jack Steer" <>
Subject: Re: [STEER] Copyright issues/Surrey Wills Extracts - Withoutprejudice
Date: Tue, 10 Jun 2008 14:31:03 +0100
References: <829024.75570.qm@web50612.mail.re2.yahoo.com><000001c8c700$019e0600$7f00a8c0@D69FVG1S><BAY112-W54BD34D7D85B8852C53722A3B60@phx.gbl><BAY112-W35736E30E8A6A995FC79B2A3B10@phx.gbl>
Thanks for this Margaret. It's years since I asked Oxfordshire County
Council's solicitor whether I was in breach of a particular copyright
relating to parish registers.
I am not a solicitor and don't pretend to be able to quote legal precedents
for any of this. Nor am I aware of any issues that relate to copyright
outside England and Wales.
You wrote
<Comments, anyone? The theme running through them all appears to be that you
can use the sites for personal research relating to a particular family and
can circulate that information.>
Rather than go through you email I decided to list what I believe to be
guiding principles
Copyright laws vary from country to country but the basic intention is to
protect the rights of the originator of an idea, a story, a theory, or
whatever, (what is now known as "intellectual property") to receive
appropriate payment for their originality FOR A LIMITED PERIOD OF TIME.
Confusion seems to be setting in where organisations such as Ancestry or
Free BDM are claiming copyright to information, which was not theirs in the
first place or is already in the public arena. This seems to stem from a
basic misunderstanding.
Where an organisation collects information from public sources and produces
it in an easy to use format, it is only that format which is copyright. The
information cannot be copyright as anybody is free to go and legitimately
access the original records for themselves.
The vast majority of information available to us on the web comes from some
form of public record (parish records, MI's, censuses, etc.) and therefore
cannot be covered by copyright (unless they are relatively recent, in which
case Crown Copyright might apply in the U.K.). If I go and collect the names
from the gravestones in the local churchyard I can certainly publish my list
and hope that somebody will pay me for it; but I have no "intellectual
right" to the information itself and cannot prevent somebody else from also
collecting the names and making them available for free - my only "right" is
to prevent somebody from copying my entire list as it stands and
distributing it without recompense to me. The test here would be whether the
third party had done their own research or just copied mine. But as all my
records, whatever their source, are always in a format that no one else
would want to copy, the issue of my collecting publicly available records
does not infringe the copyright of any individual or body.
You also raised some specific issues
1. In the UK it is perfectly legal to take a copy of copyrighted material
for personal research. The photocopying machines in most of the parts of the
Bodleian Library in Oxford have such a notice posted on the wall.
Personal research means research done by an individual for whatever reason.
It cannot be restricted by anyone and does not apply just to your particular
family.
2. There is also the de minimus factor. If you abstract a few lines from a
copyrighted document, then it may be used by you in your published work
provided that due acknowledgement is made.
3. In all cases the final arbiter is the court, not an individual nor a
corporate body who happen to think that their copyright may have been
infringed. Most courts will take a commonsense approach.
4. It follows that misleading comments in publications such as "No part of
this publication may be reproduced, stored in any retrieval system, or
transmitted, in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission." may be
ignored, if one is simply extracting pieces of information for personal
research.
So that the Free BMD restriction "Data extracted from Free BMD must not be
reproduced in any form" cannot be justified.
It really isn't so difficult. All the information is in the public domain
and can be accessed in a number of different ways. Free BDM cannot copyright
the information, they can copyright their format. And quite honestly they're
welcome to it.
Parish registers have been dealt with by the October 1993 opinion of the
Legal Advisory Commission of the General Synod when they announced that
entries in parish registers do not attract copyright either as literary
works or as compilations. The opinion begins on page 208d of Legal Opinions
concerning the Church of England (1994 onwards, London).
This is not the judgement of a court and therefore not a binding precedent.
However, it would take a brave executor of the executor of a former
incumbent or parish clerk to seek to assert the ownership of copyright in
such register entries in legal proceedings. I cannot see how a present
incumbent could claim ownership of any copyright subsisting in the works of
his predecessors (unless they assigned it to their successors in their
corporate capacity), but I am open to correction.
But be warned, if you submit your transcriptions to Genuki Devon you will be
told that you must obtain the permission of the current incumbent. And if
you do request such permission it could be argued that you were
acknowledging his or her right to copyright. That is why there are no Jack
Steer transcriptions on Genuki Devon.
In reality nobody is likely to worry about small pieces of information being
exchanged between individuals or even groups. The real concern is to prevent
the wholesale pirate copying of pamphlets/CDs/systems etc., which is
perfectly understandable, but should not be confused with copyright on the
underlying base data.
On that basis Judy should be within her rights to copy a particular will and
circulate to those people who have expressed an interest in it.
The most valuable piece of advice that the County Solicitor offered to me
was that I should never forhet that court cases are very expensive toys and
that pursuing minor infringements is in no one's interest.
Regards,
Jack Steer
----- Original Message -----
From: "Margaret Wilkinson" <>
To: <>
Sent: Sunday, June 08, 2008 7:33 AM
Subject: [STEER] Copyright issues/Surrey Wills Extracts
>
> Judy, With regard to Surrey Wills Abstracts.
>
> Obviously, I have a vested interest in the will of Benjamin HALL and
> copyright is a difficult issue.
>
> The list would not be the same were it not for census, BMD and similar
> information.
>
> The terms of agreement for ancestry.co.uk are -
>
> Limited Use LICENCE
> You are licensed to use the Content only for personal or professional
> family history research, and may download Content only as search results
> relevant to that research. The download of the whole or material parts of
> any work or database is prohibited. Resale of a work or database or
> portion thereof, except as specific results relevant to specific research
> for an individual, is prohibited. Online or other republication of Content
> is prohibited except as unique data elements that are part of a unique
> family history or genealogy.
>
> I take that to mean that I may use content to look up my own family and
> more or less do what I like with the content, e.g. 1871 census for my
> particular STEER family I could provide census image and Ancestry's own
> transcript (if I wanted to use theirs) online.
> I also take that to mean in the broader sense that I may publish census
> images and Ancestry transcripts as data included in someone else's family
> history, i.e look ups for other STEER families.
> They have a 'share' icon where you can email someone the image direct from
> the site itself, though they have a limit on how many images one person
> can accept.
> I also think that in the terms of the agreement, I can make my own
> transcriptions fairly freely available, provided I do not charge for it
> (though I know there are several chargeable look up services on Ebay -
> does that count as professional family history research?).
> I cannot publish a job lot of STEER or other entries - images, Ancestry's
> own transcripts etc on a STEER website (not sure about a job lot of STEER
> images with my own transcriptions). John STEER was able to put his own
> transcriptions online - his was a job of love, spending many hours looking
> at the originals (or were they copies of originals?), he had a right to
> those transcripts, and do whatever he liked with them.
>
> British Origins has very similar conditions to ancestry.co.uk, I think any
> arguments for census transcripts, etc, would also apply to them -
>
> 3.1 You may use the Services only for personal or professional family
> history research and may download content only as search results relevant
> to that research.
> 3.2 You may not download from the Sites the whole or significant portions
> of any work or database.
> 3.3 You may not resell the whole or any portion of a work or database
> except as specific results relevant to specific research for an
> individual.
> 3.4 You may not make any data downloaded or copied from the Sites or
> provided via the Services accessible via any web site without our written
> permission, except as items incorporated into your personal family tree or
> similar personal information.
>
>
> FreeBMD -
>
> 1. FreeBMD is provided free of charge for personal research purposes
> only.
> 2. Access to the data held by FreeBMD is only permitted manually via the
> search page. The use of front end programs or sites to enter search
> parameters is strictly forbidden
> 3. Data extracted from FreeBMD must not be reproduced in any form.
>
> This is perhaps a more difficult one, and this is for a free site!
> The images are also provided on ancestry.co.uk, so I take that to mean
> that I can do as above if I use Ancestry.
> If I use FreeBMD, as most of us do, am I in the terms of the agreement?
> If we look at the original image and transcribe it ourselves, there is
> clearly not a breach of the terms.
> But most of us post these BMD references freely.
>
> As for Rootsweb itself, which this STEER list is a part of - this has
> identical restictions as ancestry.co.uk -
>
> You are licensed to use the Content only for personal or professional
> family history research, and may download Content only as search results
> relevant to that research. The download of the whole or significant
> portions of any work or database is prohibited. Resale of a work or
> database or portion thereof, except as specific results relevant to
> specific research for an individual, is prohibited. On line or other
> republication of Content is prohibited except as unique data elements that
> are part of a unique family history or genealogy.
>
>
> I have just realised that Rootsweb has a 'Copyright' mailing list, but the
> answer isn't very easy to find in there - lots of queries about
> individuals rights against the big companies, rather than the other way
> around.
>
> Rootschat has a rather strange copyright policy, where it is all right to
> post information without quoting the secondary source - e.g. census
> information has to quote ''Census Data included in this post is Crown
> Copyright (see: www.nationalarchives.gov.uk)'', but ancestry itself is not
> allowed to be mentioned.
> Once when looking for a difficult person I asked if someone had access to
> another census provider other than ancestry, in the hope of locating said
> missing person - my post was censored and I had a message sent from the
> moderator.
>
> Comments, anyone? The theme running through them all appears to be that
> you can use the sites for personal research relating to a particular
> family, and can circulate that information.
>
> Margaret
>
>
>
>
>
>
>> From:
>> To:
>> Date: Thu, 5 Jun 2008 21:33:41 +1000
>> Subject: Re: [STEER] Elizabeth Ann STEERE & Surrey Wills Abstracts
>>
>> On another matter altogether, British Origins have released Surrey Wills
>> Abstracts 1470-1856, available to subscribers.
>>
>> Because of copyright etc., I can't provide transcriptions, but may be
>> able
>> to clear up queries.
>>
>> One Abstract sorted out a problem for me. Margaret and Jack will no doubt
>> remember the discussions on the will of Mary WARE, formerly Hall. I was
>> unable to find a death date for Benjamin HALL, and his will abstract
>> provided that, 10 Feb 1793.
>
>
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