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Archiver > USGENWEB-ALL > 1999-06 > 0928869474


From: Teri Pettit <>
Subject: Re: [USGENWEB-ALL-L] What would you do?
Date: Tue, 8 Jun 1999 12:17:54 -0700


At 8:53 PM -0700 6/7/99, Bridgett Smith wrote:
>What would you do if you picked up a book that has information in it
>regarding the county that you host, and found several items that
>looked very familiar?
>
>What would you do if looking further you find that a piece that you
>personally transcribed is in this published book, exactly like you
>had it (well almost) including typos, the only thing missing is
>anything that you have on your webpage in brackets.

My county site has three kinds of pages on it.

(1) Narrative material by me that is copyrightable, e.g.,

The Isaac Hall Murder of 1868,
or The Family that Slays Together, Stays Together
http://www.best.com/~tpettit/rowan/ikehall.html

The Miraculous Fall of James Henry Hall
http://www.best.com/~tpettit/rowan/bios/hall-jh.html

(Sorry, I can't resist plugging these. They're fun reading.)

(2) Data that I've personally transcribed. (Marriages, births, deaths,
and soon the 1870 census.)

(3) Cemetery surveys which were collected by the Rowan County Historical
Society, which I turned into html from Excel spreadsheets that one
of the Society members sent me.
http://www.best.com/~tpettit/rowan/cemetery/cem-list.html

(2) and (3) aren't really copyrightable because they are facts, although
the Rowan County Historical Society claims a copyright on their pages,
and I haven't objected.

For the pages that I personally authored, what I would do is contact the
'harvester' and CORDIALLY try to arrange to have an acknowledgement of
my work and a link to my web site included in their publication. As an
incentive, I would offer to include information about how to order their
books/CD's (or a cross-link to their mirror site) on my web pages.

This is true even for the material that I could legally copyright.

If the files were submitted by someone else other than me, and that
person was NOT also selling their own book, I'd recommend the same
course of action, but leave the decision (and any action) up to the
submitter.

In many ways, the data harvesters help us in our goal of distributing
more data more widely. If they are putting out books or CD's, those
formats are likely to be purchased by people for whom web access is
inconvenient. Great! Who am I to say that only people with computers
and modems should be able to easily do genealogy? If someone else is
putting up a duplicate of my web site, again, it helps to reduce the
load on my site and make the data available when my ISP goes down.

Where it hurts is that the volunteers who've spent hours transcribing
records very understandably like to have their work recognized. Well,
many 'harvesters' have nothing against recognizing the authorship of
the volunteers. Maybe they'd be quite happy to do so if they didn't
have to fear a reprisal, or if they hadn't had their dander raised
by someone taking a confrontational approach. You know the saying
about flies and honey.

(Sandy's experience was an exception, because it sounds like the
goal of the person who copied her web site was to drum up clients
for his web-site design business, by making them think 'wow, that
company makes nice pages'. But the goal of most data harvesters is
to sell more books and CD's, not to get someone to think they're
good at collecting data.)

So, if the harvesters print their books, CD's, or mirror web sites,
and in them they say "This data was transcribed from such-and-such
primary source, by So-and-So, as a contribution to the USGenWeb Project,
http://www.usgenweb.org/, a non-profit volunteer organization providing
free online access to genealogical data and location-based query boards.
So-and-So has given us permission to <distribute the data in book/CD
form>/<provide this mirror site> as a service to those who are unable
to access the original data at <URL to specific USGenWeb page>", and
in exchange for the recognition I make it easier for people to learn
about their books, then it is a win-win situation.

Note that I specifically said that the transcriber gave permission,
not that USGenWeb did. The USGenWeb Project does not claim ownership
of the files submitted to it, and thus cannot extend any permissions
vis-a-vis those files.

For the cemetery surveys collected by the RCHS, it is more problematic.

The Rowan County Historical Society is also in the process of compiling
their surveys into a book which they plan to sell, at a bit over cost, to
raise funds for the society. A book sold by someone else could potentially
cut into their fund-raising, so I would not be willing to offer to post
any information about a competitive publication. Realistically, there is
nothing that I could offer the harvester that is likely to be attractive
to them.

And, since legally cemetery surveys are not copyrightable except for the
format, and any harvester is likely to have altered the format sufficiently
to avoid that liability, there is no plausible threat I could make either.
(Nor would I wish to if there were, since threats spread ill will. Like
Sandy said so well, the world doesn't need more territorial squabbles.)

So, I would be faced with the problem of how to ensure that the Historical
Society continued to reap the rewards of the labor invested by its
volunteers, given that I couldn't realistically do much about the
competitor's books. What I think I would do is ramp up the publicity
on behalf of the Historical Society. Do a search and find out where
the competitor is advertising their book. Advertise the Historical
Society's version in the same places, and more. Emphasize that buying
from the Historical Society will support future projects and reward
the labors of the volunteers. Make no mention of the competitor's book
AT ALL!! Just try to make it likely that anyone who happens to learn
of the competing book through *other channels* learns of the Society's
book as well. If somebody comes across both ads, they can draw their
own conclusions about who is more deserving of their dollars.

// Teri Pettit

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