I'm writing this on Sunday, which is an appropriate time to get behind the pulpit and preach a little (I do come from a long line of Methodist and Baptist preachers, you know).

Today's sermon deals with Privacy and Copyright issues in genealogy. I'm talking about protecting the privacy of living individuals, and ensuring against 'theft of intellectual property' when someone uses your research against your permission. Practice Safe Genealogy, and Bring Out Your Dead! Can I get an Amen?

As background, I once shared my entire family file with someone who, in turn, gave it to one of those World Tree Collection CDROM outfits. Imagine my horror! I've spent nearly 20 years researching my ancestry and compiling data for eventual publication in book form, and this person just 'gives it away'. And worse, included in that file was the research efforts of several other people.

I haven't and won't buy that CDROM myself, but I can search the names in it online and found that it contains the whole family, down to and including my children. It also contains many mistakes that have since been corrected in my copy, but will live on forever in published form, thanks to this unthinking individual.

But Gene, you say, you can't copyright your ancestors, can you? Well, yes and no. I can't copyright facts about an individual derived from public records, but I can copyright conclusions drawn from those facts. I can also copyright the 'compilation' of research, and even an 'index' of names associated with a particular family.

I have no legal recourse against that unnamed World Tree company. They made the unthinking individual sign a disclaimer regarding their submission, stating that 'it was their work', and 'they had permission', and so on. I suppose I could take legal action against the individual, but the damage is done... and the lesson has been learned.

From now on, I am taking some simple precautions. I am not sharing my entire file with anyone. Family history information on my Internet site contains appropriate copyright protection. I will not 'publish' personal information on living individuals, beyond their name. I will use the word LIVING in place of birth dates, marriage dates, and so on.

Cool tools to promote this philosophy are available. The graphics depicted in this article are available for your use, you'll need to transload them to your site. Each is linked to the page I extracted it from.

Related Links:
Privacy Issues
Who Owns Genealogy? Cousins and Copyrights
Horror On The Web
GEN100: Privacy and Genealogy