The Generations Network, parent company of Ancestry.com, has been granted a U.S. patent for a "method of consolidating genealogy records [that] includes partitioning the records using at least one index file to form one or more partitions, sorting the records in a partition based on a data element in the records, comparing records within a sort range, based on the comparison, identifying same person records, consolidating information in the same person records, receiving a request from a user to view at least a portion of the consolidated information for a particular group of same person records, and sending a file that includes the portion to the user."
That is a mouthful, but I think it means that the software finds probable matches in a huge database in order to find the same person in more than one entry.
Assigned to The Generations Network Inc., Provo, the patent was granted to Bennett Cookson Jr., Kendall J. Jefferson, Grant Parkinson, Douglas T. Reid, Daren Thayne, all of Orem; Ken Boyer, Cedar Hills; Jerry Collings, American Fork; James Mark Hamilton, Provo; Michael J. Wolfgramm, Pleasant Grove..
The patent was filed on December 29, 2003, and only granted recently, on July 24, 2007. You can find full details of patent number 7,249,129 at http://www.freepatentsonline.com/7249129.html.
Well ya just gotta think that this is yet another thing that just shouldn't be patentable.
http://www.realtechnews.com/posts/2877
http://www.realtechnews.com/posts/2575
It seems that every week or two brings another example in the technology arena of a patent being granted for something that has existed for ages, or is just common sense.
How does this differ significantly from the Match and Merge technology built into most current day genealogy software.
Will all of those software companies now have to pay royalties to use anything that resembles this in their software - with the notable exception of Family Treemaker which is owned by this patent holder?
Hmmmmmm
Roger
Posted by: theKiwi | August 27, 2007 at 01:46 PM
Let me get this striaght ... TGN just got a patent on a method of sorting records and then comparing other records against the sorted list to find a match?
That is just incredible.
If there is any proof needed that our patent system is broken then this is it.
Posted by: Dino (All Dino, All the Time) | August 27, 2007 at 02:09 PM
Just wonder if this is an attempt to derail FamilySearch from pushing ahead with their Genesis Project (colloboration with many libraries and private companies getting documents online for free access)?
Posted by: W. David Samuelsen | August 27, 2007 at 03:00 PM
I am totally disgusted with ANCESTRY.
They have harvested my website and placed it behind their subscribers services without my permission.
They have also cached untold numbers of other sites including ones that have nothing to do with genealogy.
They have harvested www.usgennet.net files and other free genealogy. These sites are copyrighted and should not be cached and used by Ancestry when they are made available free to the public.
Search results also turned up these:
Search results for 1 page descriptions only
low alike. So, at least, I was told when tried and convicted of conspiracy for attempting to rescue babies from abortion in England. But the IPPF and Planned Parenthood of America, which contributes money...
Birthplan.com Birthstories.com Babies Today Baby Daily Breastfeed.com...(6-13-06) Anna Nicole Smith Confirms She's Expecting Baby Anna Nicole Smith has confirmed she is pregnant...
...Spielberg's film. Posted by Aaron Smith in Male Name History at 09:23...son a lifetime. Posted by Aaron Smith in Male Name History at 07:00...boy who lived. Posted by Aaron Smith in Male Name History at 03:24...
...saint? Posted by Aaron Smith in Male Biblic Names...death. Posted by Aaron Smith in Male Biblic Names...life. Posted by Aaron Smith in Male Biblic Names...2007. Posted by Aaron Smith in Male Biblic Names...
...the dry and dull affair it could have been. She's an RN who has delivered billions and billions of babies, so she's seen everything.Right in the beginning of class, we went around the room introducing ourselves...
Year of the Dog 2006 March Year of the Dog Dedicated to Mans Best Friend March 2006 Monthly Archive Oakley 31 Mar 2006 12:01 am Prismacolor pencils on light blue Crescent board, about 10 x 8. Reference...
...Know ThemIncidentally, on Thursday, Al Mohler posted about new Ultrasound technology for viewing babies in 3-D, real time in the womb. We got one of these at 37 weeks. Al Mohler posts about abortion advocates...
...(Ruth 1, 2). Moses was born in a dangerous time for babies. Pharaoh had decreed that all Jewish boy babies be killed as soon as they were born. His mother...
...Nelson. Go Bar: The Ones. JR's Baitshack: John Thrasher. Klassic's: Petey Wheatstraw. Little Kings: Babies Who Hurt People; The Plague Tasty World: The Bearfoot Hookers; The Chasers; Redneck GReece Deluxe....
Michael Rosenberg's Quotations List Michael Rosenberg's Quotations List Contact Michael at: msr@casbah.acns.nwu.edu Take me back to loQtus! The Quotations (by subject) AMERICA Too many of us look upon...
Carbon County News Online......Archives Week of March 10, 2005 NEWS Roberts advances, opens State C championship tourney play today By Bill Cenis CCN Publisher The Roberts Rockets boys didnt get the Southern...
I did not copy them all. What does any of this have to do with genealogy?
WHY IS ANCESTRY HARVESTING FREE ONLINE GENEALOGY THAT IS UNDER COPYRIGHTS AND PLACING THE ENTIRE SITE ON THEIR SITE.
Where are the members of the LDS and why would they allowing this kind of conduct.
M. Daniels
Posted by: M. Daniels | August 27, 2007 at 03:44 PM
I personally think this is going to be the biggest impediment yet devised to stem the free flow of data to the thousands of family pages and various genealogy societies. It seems to reflect a lack of understanding of the community they wish to serve and their own clients. Even as a free service, it was not welcome. Using their patent to profit from the thousands of hours of work by the genealogy community across the country is seen as unconscionable by all I have spoken to or heard from. Since your newsletter is widely read, it might be helpful to all to take a poll of how the genealogy community views this effort. I can not believe that Ancestry would wish to see their user base evaporate just for this one toy. The best comment I have heard included:
"What about all the folks who view our 'cached' sites on 'ancestry's site', That is NOT an actual visit to YOUR site, but their site. Volunteers donate materials to YOUR site. Wonder how many potential donors our sites will miss, as folks will just read our hard work on the pay site totally bypassing the actual site the information came from. Is this not just wrong?"
Simple logic should be sufficient to have the management of Ancestry.com understand that the free flow of genealogy is made possible by contributors who will now simply keep the family Bible in the chest along with all their cherished family photos. They may be subscribers to Ancestry.com but they will also withhold their information, freely shared with the genealogy community, simply because it is now being charged for. I will not renew my own subscription and I have been a full member of all services since day one! I do not wish to cease being a paid subscriber but it appears to be the only means to get the message across to those who do not understand their paying users.
I might also add that the links to my own family site that has been 10 years in the making, will no longer be available so their subscribers will only find broken links.
Posted by: Yuteva | August 27, 2007 at 03:49 PM
This is the most exacting example of piracy I have seen.It is unethical, regardless of any legally issued patent. That patent is on the technology, not the right to use it to pirate materials. I have no problem with links, to any of my websites, but putting them in frames is a different story. most of the links to the "live sites" didn't work, and my material has been online for free all the time.
Do they owe me for the use of it, I would think so.
Needless to say, I won't renew my subscription with them after being a long time customer.
Posted by: BBrooks | August 27, 2007 at 05:45 PM
Where does one go at Ancestry.com to see what some of the above posts are complaining about - harvested and cached sites, sites in frames etc?
Thanks
Roger
Posted by: theKiwi | August 27, 2007 at 06:55 PM
When you file a patent, you typically have to find the least restrictive description that covers your "invention" without covering "prior art". Of course people have been doing "blocking", sorting, scoring and "merging" for some time now. However, if you look at the details of this patent, there are some fairly specific requirements that keep it from covering most of what has gone on up to now (like having to compute a score for the person, father, and mother, then use those three scores to come up with another score). Most genealogical matching does not work exactly like the patent spells out, and so does not infringe on the patent (and, conversely, would not invalidate it). It would be surprising if someone had not already done even the specific thing they are claiming, but most people haven't. I don't tend to like these kinds of patents, either--they serve more as intellectual "claim staking" rather than invention and sharing--but I wouldn't panic about the implications of this one.
Posted by: Dave | August 27, 2007 at 07:32 PM
If you are a subscriber to their paid services, Their latest additions are listed and this one has new beside it-
Internet Biographical Collection -New
http://ancestry.com/search/db.aspx?dbid=1162
Every thing I have looked at is in frames. The message boards are full of anger over this and webmasters with private domains are pulling their files, this is all across this country.
These were and are all public free to view websites.Easily found with any search engine. They do their customers a dis-service by making this partof their subscription and a great dis-service to the webmasters and domain name owners by using frames.
Many of us will either take down the sites or put something on to keep them from spidering our sites.
Posted by: BBrooks | August 27, 2007 at 08:06 PM
Well I'm not a subscriber to Ancestry, so a full visit will have to wait until I'm at the local library, but I got enough from that page to find something that made me laugh at the patheticness of all of this...
I did a search for "Houliston". There are two results...
http://www.ancestry.com/search/obit/view.aspx?db=WebBiographies&kw=houliston&pid=135780&url=http://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll%3Frank%3d0%26gsfn%3d%26gsln%3dhouliston%26_82000000%3d%26rg_81000001__date%3d%26rs_81000001__date%3d0%26gskw%3d%26prox%3d1%26db%3dwebbiographies%26ti%3d0%26ti.si%3d0%26gss%3dangs-d
is one of them if that URL survives to be viewable by anyone with an Ancestry account. But the page referenced is our Christmas newsletter from 2000 posted here
http://lisaandroger.com/Newsletter2000/index.html
I'm glad I'm not paying Ancestry if the best they can do on one of my elusive ancestor surnames is my own Christmas Newsletter LOL.
I wouldn't mind seeing a screen shot of how they present that if someone can get to view it - eMail it to me at rogerkiwi@aol.com please?
Roger
Posted by: theKiwi | August 27, 2007 at 09:05 PM
I don't understand how this new Internet Biographical Collection is different then any other search engine like google, yahoo or msn all of whom cache the pages that their spiders harvest from the internet. This is a good addition to ancestry.com and it is reasonable to pay because they are filtering the search results so that they display those most relevant to genealogy.
Posted by: FredStar | August 27, 2007 at 09:21 PM
Good lord, what a lot of kerfuffle about NOTHING. The bot site says: > Why on Earth would anyone pull their information, especially that contributed by third parties? On the other hand, granting a patent for a new search technology is idiotic. One can certainly not blame Ancestry for jumping on the patent bandwagon, since our US Government seems to be run by idiots lately. They want to offer value to their paying customers, and spidering the sites they host for FREE certainly seems natural. They ARE in business to make a profit, after all. Valorie
Posted by: Valorie Zimmerman | August 28, 2007 at 12:29 AM
IBC is not what it is.
It is what some are saying... SELLING access to FREE sites.
IBC spidered the FREE access sites including USGenWeb Archives Project files, and Political Graveyards which is free access as well. I verified this by checking to my horror, Ancestry/TGN's IBC search engine actually requires payment before being allowed to see FREE genealogy sites.
Extreme dishonest, unethical and blatant piracy. Shades of Elias Abodeely!
Posted by: W. David Samuelsen | August 28, 2007 at 12:44 AM
Huh, my quote didn't come through. The bot site says: How do I prevent MyFamilyBot from crawling my site? MyFamilyBot supports the internet standard protocols for restricting spiders from crawling web sites. These protocols are described here: http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/exclusion.html
Posted by: Valorie Zimmerman | August 28, 2007 at 12:48 AM
> They want to offer value to their paying customers,
>and spidering the sites they host for FREE certainly seems natural
My Christmas newsletter mentioned above is NOT hosted for free by Ancestry - in fact it's hosted BY ME on the very same computer I'm typing this message on - at my expense for the high speed DSL line.
I don't have a problem with Ancestry knowing I've got a web page (hundreds of them actually) that mention the name Houliston (although it certainly is funny that the only one they've got isn't from my online genealogy - see link below) but imagine the uproar there would be if Google were to suddenly start putting all of its linked content inside a frame that left the viewer thinking they were still at google.com, AND they charged for the access to this.
As to the robots thing - now they tell us - had they said before they started, this is what we're going to do, and here's how you can prevent it, that would have been far better than saying now we know your page exists, here's how you can stop us from seeing it in the future.
plink plink
Roger
Posted by: theKiwi | August 28, 2007 at 06:25 AM
Actually all they are doing is charging people for using their search engine. It is actually no different from their census search. The census shows the county and state but in order for you to see the town or the record you must be a member. The fact that there is a hit for the search is able to be seen.
Actually the search isn't as specific as some have said, I seached for my relative and got about 6000 hits on Ancestry (John Fear). It gave anything with the name John and the word fear. For example, "John lived in fear of snakes."
If you don't like the fact that Ancestry is charging to give you the link, just copy the info that they give you and paste it into Google, MSN, etc.
Posted by: Peter Fear | August 28, 2007 at 08:50 AM
I think all of us that have had our data harvested should join with USGenNet.org in a class action lawsuit against Ancestry. This problem has been going on for some time now. My data was harvested 3 times by individuals that would not answer any emails for them to take the data down. Other data that was shared with me and put on my sites was stolen also. There has been a lot of talk about this for years, yet Ancestry keeps on doing these things and nobody does anything. Is there a way that we can change our web pages and trash Ancestry for selling our free data on the pages they have already harvested? I would be all for some way to tell the people that subscribe to Ancestry how they are being ripped off. Are there any software packages that will prevent the spidering of sites? I would love to know about them!
Thanks!
Terria
Posted by: Terria Baynor | August 28, 2007 at 08:58 AM
My problem is that the information Ancestry.com took from me has errors (which I corrected later) and I can't even correct what they have unless I join.
Posted by: Karin | August 28, 2007 at 10:01 AM
Here's a devious idea. Give them a piece of your mind by presenting their bot with different content than you present to all other visitors, including many messages stating your copyright of these pages.
Posted by: Devious Mind | August 28, 2007 at 10:15 AM
This is an interesting bunch of messages. However, may I play Devil's Advocate for a moment?
What is the difference between Ancestry.com spidering these web sites and placing excerpts on Ancestry.com (available for a fee) versus Google doing the same thing and placing excerpts on Google.com (at no charge)?
If the data is already available on free search engines, I am not sure why there would be an issue with a for-pay site having the same information. Obviously, I would always advise people to use the free search engines first.
- Dick Eastman
Posted by: Dick Eastman | August 28, 2007 at 10:46 AM
I have mixed feelings about this.
First, it isn't any different than Google is doing. They cache all the sites the can find and then present search results along with ads to make money. With Ancestry, you pay up front.
As for 'stealing' data. I have long felt that I am not going to post anything that I don't want anyone to take and pass off as their own, without proper attribution. It happens all of the time and there is nothing anyone can do to stop it. It's that whole 'information wants to be free' fallacy that is so ingrained into the internet culture.
If someone takes your research and passes it off as their own and it is later found to contain errors ... well, too bad. The people taking your data obviously don't care enough to do their own research, they're probably just name collectors anyway.
So what have we learned from all of this?
1. That Ancestry is a big, money-grubbing company that only cares about its bottom line? No, we already knew this.
2. That Ancestry will take people's hard work and then resell it without their knowledge?. No, let's all think back to World Family Tree disks.
3. That there will be a groundswell revolution that will see thousands of people dropping their Ancestry memberships? I don't think so. There's still a lot of untapped information in there for me.
4. That people will start adding the robots.txt files to their web sites to inhibit caching of sites? I really don't think that many people will take the time or effort to figure out how to do that.
5. That Roger looks pretty good in a kilt? Absolutely. So it wasn't a total loss.
Posted by: Dino (All Dino, All the Time) | August 28, 2007 at 10:59 AM
--> M. Daniels wrote "Where are the members of the LDS and why would they allowing this kind of conduct."
People really need to remember that Ancestry.com is NOT affiliated with the Church of the Latter Day Saints. The church cannot risk its not-for-profit status in any manner, and that would include any affiliation with Ancestry, which is a privately owned, for-profit company. (I am not LDS.)
Dick, regarding your question, I know that I just noticed these USGenWeb sites showing up in search results, and I wondered how it was possible. The results clearly said "This information is copyrighted" yet I was still on an Ancestry.com page. (I never clicked on the link, which does bring you right to their web site, no frames.) Clearly, it is just a search engine, but that wasn't my first impression.
Posted by: Susan Daily | August 28, 2007 at 11:10 AM
I'm fine with Ancestry indexing my sites.
What I'm not quite so happy about is the suggestion that they are presented to paying customers in frames. Google does this with images, but not web pages.
Since I'm not an Ancestry customer, except when I'm at the Grand Rapids Public Library I can't check this until I next go there.
But it's surely a no-brainer to think that they'd gain a whole lot more goodwill and far less angst and bad feelings if they allowed the free search to link directly to freely accessible pages without the need to be a paying logged in customer.
If they tried really hard at filtering and sorting their results they could become the Google of genealogy search engines, but from the snippets posted above it seems there's a way to go with that too.
Roger
Posted by: theKiwi | August 28, 2007 at 01:02 PM
Ancestry has been using this methodology for a number of years. The patent was applied for back in 2003 and the only thing that has changed recently is the granting of the patent.
Once again the the anti-Ancestry crowd starts firing off comments as if this is some new scheme from Ancestry to steal everyone's family history. Anyone who has ever used Ancestry search has already used this database-sorting methodology.
Right now, in 2007, nothing comes close to matching Ancestry's breadth and depth of information. Yes, Footnote and World Vital Records, among other services, offer information not available on Ancestry, but I subscribe to them AND keep my Ancestry subscription renewed each year. If I'm going to invest considerable time and money documenting my family history, I'm going to upload that information to the site most likely to be around in 10 years and which has the greatest visibility. I, unlike some of the gripers here, don't claim to own my family history and am only concerned that it, along with scanned family photos, be preserved for the next generation.
Posted by: Gary | August 28, 2007 at 01:52 PM
Ever since ancestry.com took over genealogy.com I've not been a happy camper with them. They want full control and in today's society no one will stop them. I belonged when it was $50.00 a year but now that they want to get rich over it I refuse to pay them a dime. If I can't get my infornmation free I don't get it, it's that simple and I'm doing quit well without them.
Posted by: Rodney Smith | August 28, 2007 at 02:44 PM
I think what the government allowed them to patent is a travesty. Not only is it completely vague, it will allow them to go after anyone who's their competition for putting an index together?
Ridiculous. I imagine this is on their offensive line against Familysearch/LDS, and even Gencircles.
I haven't paid for them in years. Their ridiculously bad search engine nearly never finds what I need - I end up with better luck at other sites. I only use ancestry at the library when someone has idiotically done an Ancestry family tree and asked me to take a look at it.
This should be an interesting amount of forthcoming years to see whom Generations decides in their way and sues.
What they are doing isn't any different than what Google does, in theory. The biggest and most crucial difference is - I can jump on Google any time and get the data. To look at Ancestry.com stuff I have to pay an exorbitant amount of money to do so.
An exorbitant amount of money vs. a company making money on ads? I'll take the advertising. At least their search engine works.
Posted by: Concetta | August 28, 2007 at 03:21 PM
The people that are commenting on the Ancestry issue fall into several different types. There are the individuals that are seeking information on ancestors (pretty much all of us), those that have posted information on our own family either through web sites or family trees and those that volunteer with organization like USGenbWeb, American Local History Network,etc. The last type, members of "free genealogy information" organizations wiew Ancestry's action as totally and completely inappropriate. We spend hundreds of hours posting information of a genealogy nature for use of researchers with the understanding that the information and data is absolutely "FREE". All of these sites, usually county sites within the various states, contain data and information submitted by others with the understanding that it will be made available to researchers at no cost. This being the case, Ancestry has no right to cache the information in frames and charge a fee to view it. Yes, Rootsweb.com, an Ancestry subsidiary provides many of these organizations with free Internet hosting. Up until recently, this was ad free. However, Just a few weeks ago, Ancestry announced that space hosted by Rootsweb.com would now carry a prominent banner indicating that Rootsweb was the sponsor. Now this! Is it any wonder that those that spend hours every week posting genealogy material to the Internet would be concerned about Ancestry selling data that is free elsewhere on the Internet. What right do they have to spider a copyrighted site and show the data in their frames and charge a fee.
Put yourself in my position and tell me how you would feel?
Everette
Posted by: Everette Carr | August 28, 2007 at 04:33 PM
I am confused.
Exactly what are they doing?
Some says frames, other say copies.
Can some who knows what they are talking about tell us, and include a screenshot?
Posted by: Confused | August 28, 2007 at 04:57 PM
My information was placed on for free viewing by researchers, it is not placed there for Ancestry to put behind their firewall and charge others to access. They are not just putting links they are taking the entire pages, ignoring Terms of Service and Copyright of Graphics, contents, etc. How can this be ethical or legal?
The ultimate repercussions from this type of taking of pages is far more wide spread that many of you are even thinking of.
The other side of the coin is this: Why should Ancestry make a profit off of work that I have done for ten years? What gives Ancestry the right to make more profit off a not-for-profit site? What you are witnessing here is a very frightful example of how a vauge use of something can turn into a nightmare of the largest proportions and can ultimately create untold horrors stories for people that we have not even thought of as of yet.
I am not convinced that this is the way that this was thought about when it was granted. For those of you that are for this, then I hate to tell you, but you are evidently one of those people that just thinks only of yourself and nothing of others feelings, hardwork or the use of fairness, this is just inconceiveable to me. Would you feel the same way if someone walked into your house and took this same information from your computer?
The internet is a powerful and wonderful tool when used correctly, when it is used incorrectly, it is a powerful and not so wonderful tool especially when you are the recipient of a bad practice or policy.
Where do one person's rights begin and end and why does a major corporations patent exceed those rights? I for one feel violated, raped and pillaged! I have spent hundreds of dollars on Ancestry's fees in the past to help researchers, but I would not give them a penny now after seeing this fiasco.
This expression states it best -- Money is the root of all evil.....
Additionally, just for grins go do a search for "boobs" as keyword -
http://www.ancestry.com/search/obit/view.aspx?db=WebBiographies&kw=+boobs&pid=210724&url=http://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll%3Fdb%3dWebBiographies%252c%26rank%3d1%26gsfn%3d%26gsln%3d%26rg_81004011__date%3d%26rs_81004011__date%3d0%26gsbco%3d1%252cAll%2bCountries%26gsbpl%3d1%252c%2b%26gsbst%3d%26gsbCounty%3d%26gsbCity%3d%26gsbTown%3d%26_82004013%3d%26_82004014%3d%26_82004015%3d%26rg_81004021__date%3d%26rs_81004021__date%3d0%26gsmco%3d1%252cAll%2bCountries%26gsmpl%3d1%252c%2b%26gsmst%3d%26gsmCounty%3d%26gsmCity%3d%26gsmTown%3d%26_82004023%3d%26_82004024%3d%26_82004025%3d%26rg_81004031__date%3d%26rs_81004031__date%3d0%26gsdco%3d1%252cAll%2bCountries%26gsdpl%3d1%252c%2b%26gsdst%3d%26gsdCounty%3d%26gsdCity%3d%26gsdTown%3d%26_82004033%3d%26_82004034%3d%26_82004035%3d%26gs1co%3d1%252cAll%2bCountries%26gs1pl%3d1%252c%2b%26gs1st%3d%26gs1County%3d%26gs1City%3d%26gs1Town%3d%26%3d%252c%252c%252c%252c%252c%252c%252c%252c%252c%252c%252c%252c%252c%252c%26gskw%3dboobs%26_8000C002%3d%26_8000C003%3d%26_80008002%3d%26_80008003%3d%26_80018002%3d%26_80018003%3d%26sbo%3d0%26sbor%3d%26prox%3d1%26UseAdvRQuery%3d1%26AdvSrch%3d1%26ti%3d0%26ti.si%3d0%26gss%3dangs-i%26hovR%3d1%26fh%3d2&fn=&ln=Record+Boobs&st=r&ssrc=&pid=210724
Here is one example - it is a blog of a young person. Now what happens when this girl does not want to have this information online anymore?
http://www.ancestry.com/search/obit/view.aspx?db=WebBiographies&kw=+boobs&pid=207126&url=http://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll%3Fdb%3dWebBiographies%252c%26rank%3d1%26gsfn%3d%26gsln%3d%26rg_81004011__date%3d%26rs_81004011__date%3d0%26gsbco%3d1%252cAll%2bCountries%26gsbpl%3d1%252c%2b%26gsbst%3d%26gsbCounty%3d%26gsbCity%3d%26gsbTown%3d%26_82004013%3d%26_82004014%3d%26_82004015%3d%26rg_81004021__date%3d%26rs_81004021__date%3d0%26gsmco%3d1%252cAll%2bCountries%26gsmpl%3d1%252c%2b%26gsmst%3d%26gsmCounty%3d%26gsmCity%3d%26gsmTown%3d%26_82004023%3d%26_82004024%3d%26_82004025%3d%26rg_81004031__date%3d%26rs_81004031__date%3d0%26gsdco%3d1%252cAll%2bCountries%26gsdpl%3d1%252c%2b%26gsdst%3d%26gsdCounty%3d%26gsdCity%3d%26gsdTown%3d%26_82004033%3d%26_82004034%3d%26_82004035%3d%26gs1co%3d1%252cAll%2bCountries%26gs1pl%3d1%252c%2b%26gs1st%3d%26gs1County%3d%26gs1City%3d%26gs1Town%3d%26%3d%252c%252c%252c%252c%252c%252c%252c%252c%252c%252c%252c%252c%252c%252c%26gskw%3dboobs%26_8000C002%3d%26_8000C003%3d%26_80008002%3d%26_80008003%3d%26_80018002%3d%26_80018003%3d%26sbo%3d0%26sbor%3d%26prox%3d1%26UseAdvRQuery%3d1%26AdvSrch%3d1%26ti%3d0%26ti.si%3d0%26gss%3dangs-i%26fh%3d20&fn=&ln=Record+Boobs&st=r&ssrc=&pid=207126
http://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?indiv=1&db=WebBiographies%2c&rank=1&gsfn=&gsln=&rg_81004011__date=&rs_81004011__date=0&gsbco=1%2cAll+Countries&gsbpl=1%2c+&gsbst=&gsbCounty=&gsbCity=&gsbTown=&_82004013=&_82004014=&_82004015=&rg_81004021__date=&rs_81004021__date=0&gsmco=1%2cAll+Countries&gsmpl=1%2c+&gsmst=&gsmCounty=&gsmCity=&gsmTown=&_82004023=&_82004024=&_82004025=&rg_81004031__date=&rs_81004031__date=0&gsdco=1%2cAll+Countries&gsdpl=1%2c+&gsdst=&gsdCounty=&gsdCity=&gsdTown=&_82004033=&_82004034=&_82004035=&gs1co=1%2cAll+Countries&gs1pl=1%2c+&gs1st=&gs1County=&gs1City=&gs1Town=&=%2c%2c%2c%2c%2c%2c%2c%2c%2c%2c%2c%2c%2c%2c&gskw=boobs&_8000C002=&_8000C003=&_80008002=&_80008003=&_80018002=&_80018003=&sbo=0&sbor=&prox=1&UseAdvRQuery=1&AdvSrch=1&ti=0&ti.si=0&gss=angs-d&fh=22&recid=72128&recoff=1292
And what about above, what if this woman later decides she does not want her child to know how he/she was conceived?
Do you really want these kinds of results to come up when you search Ancestry's site? It is already difficult to sort through records on there now, these types of sites will only increase that difficulty and will result in hundreds of lost manhours searching through useless garbage to find an ancestor.
Shame on everyone that believes taking someone else information and putting it on your site is in any shape or form ethical or right.
Posted by: Totally Outraged | August 28, 2007 at 05:22 PM
Waaah Waaah Waaah. What a bunch of babies!
If all of you who volunteer and post information keep your websites up, then who cares if Ancestry wants to include the data on their site!! If people can find your site for free, they won't pay Ancestry, that's for sure. On the other hand, if I can go to Ancestry and find all your little mickeymouse sites, then that saves me time and is worth the money.
Why are you all complaining? You didn't donate your time to get rich. Besides, nobody is going to pay you for your silly little family tree showing how you're related to Charlemagne. So if Ancestry can make money by posting the data, more power to them. That's what free-market capitalism is all about.
Posted by: Carlos | August 28, 2007 at 05:47 PM
There seems to be a few people upset about this issue.
First, people have to realize that posting anything on the internet is just like posting it on the bulletin board at the grocery store. Anyone who wants to can use the information however they see fit. It's always been this way.
Sure, there's something called copyright protection and every single web page is copyrighted, but the culture of the internet routinely ignores copyright. I'm not saying that that is right or wrong, it's just the way it is.
So, get used to the fact that if you post your research in a public place, you lose control over the distribution of that research.
Second, for all of those people bemoaning that Ancestry is taking their work and displaying it on their site, I'll ask: Have you EVER taken the fruits of ANYONE ELSE's research and incorporated into your own without asking their permission first AND properly citing each and every item you've taken? If your slate is perfectly clean, then your outrage is justified.
I'm not happy with the way that Ancestry approached it, but whether it's them, Google, Yaho, MSN, or Cyndi's List (yes, even Cyndi's List is ad supported) they're all making money off of other people's work. It's the new economy.
Finally, it's not money that is the root of evil, but the LOVE of money: 1 Timothy 6:10 states "For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil."
Posted by: Dino (All Dino, All the Time) | August 28, 2007 at 05:50 PM
---> What gives Ancestry the right to make more profit off a not-for-profit site?
The same right as does Google, Yahoo, and other search engines.
---> Would you feel the same way if someone walked into your house and took this same information from your computer?
Ah, but the information was NOT in a house or any other private storage place. It was in a public place. Nobody "trespassed" to obtain the information you placed online. The better analogy is that you left your information on a sign stuck in the front lawn of your house where it is visible to everyone who walks or drives by. You placed the information in a public place. Namely, the web.
There is one basic fact that can not be ignored: when information is posted in a public place (in this case, a web site), it is visible to everyone. Within the constraints of copyright laws, the data can be republished by anyone who chooses to do so.
The U.S. copyright laws clearly state that facts may not be copyrighted (names, dates and places of birth, marriage, death, relationships, military service dates, census record entries, etc.) That information is copyright-free and can be republished by others. (I am not as familiar with copyright laws in other countries.)
In short, it is not your data. It may be the data that you collected, but it is not owned by you if it is public domain information such as names, dates, places, relationships, etc.
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. If you have questions, you are advised to seek advice from qualified legal experts. But I bet they will all agree with me on this issue.
- Dick Eastman
Posted by: Dick Eastman | August 28, 2007 at 06:50 PM
Let's clear this up. Here is a collection of facts:
My father was Warren Dow Eastman, born 8 August 1908 (the eighth day of the eighth month of the eighth year) in Corinna, Maine.
The above is a fact, or a collection of facts, depending on how you wish to think of it. I obtained that information from a very reliable source that is not available to the public: my father told me. Not trusting his memory of the date due to his young age at the time, I verified the information by checking the family Bible, a contemporary record that was recorded on or soon after the date in question. The Bible record agrees.
All of the above is information that I collected from private sources. However, it is not "my information." It is a collection of facts and facts are not owned by anyone. They are in the public domain, at least in the United States.
You can republish these facts about my father's birth and his relationship to me without asking anyone's permission. You certainly do not need my permission, even though I am the one who published the facts on this web site. The same is true for Ancestry.com. They can legally republish the above information without my permission or anyone else's permission.
Personally, I think it is a matter of politeness. I think you should always credit the source but it is not REQUIRED.
By the way, Google, Yahoo, and most other search engines do a great job of crediting sources. They show the URL of the source and then force you to go to that source page to read all the details. Ancestry.com does not because of their use of frames. Definitely impolite. But legal.
- Dick Eastman
Posted by: Dick Eastman | August 28, 2007 at 07:07 PM
Phew, what a tempest! Well, Devil Dick, I believe the difference as most of us see it is twofold - making a profit from copyrighted material without so much as a thank you let alone permission and, not making it clear that it is available elsewhere by the 'owner' at no charge. A perfect example: with the help of many volunteer indexers, the British Columbia Archives produced a wonderful online index of our civil BMD registrations all for free to the world. As a BC citizen I was very proud of being part of this leading edge Canadian product. Imagine my surprise to find it on Ancestry some years later, without the annual updates as release dates came along. In and of itself, this doesn't seem that serious and, as some have said, IF one knows of this site, one could search on Google, Yahoo or whatever search engine one prefers. Without knowing of the existence, you may not use the correct search term to find the free site.
Additionally, the copyrighting of the search process sounds very much like an effort to roadblock the Familysearch effort to make much of their info available online at no charge.
Then again, who would want the same search engine as Ancestry's? It has to be one of the worst of any genealogy site going!
All in all, I find it amazing to see such a large corporation seem to go out of its way to destroy the goodwill of its customer base. Happily, because it's so prohibitively expensive here, I haven't invested hundreds of dollars every year in such an uncaring corporation.
8-)
Joan
Posted by: Joan McIlmoyl Cleghorn | August 28, 2007 at 07:10 PM
Dick,
1. You are, of course, correct about "facts" not being subject to copyright. But these are entire web pages, not just the data.
2. I don't think the patent issued to Ancestry as anything to do with what we are discussing. Although I'm not competent to wade through all the technical jargon in the patent, I'm inclined to think it has to do with the way Ancestry is "combining" many family trees into a single one. I haven't looked at the results because why would I pay to see a combination of what is primarily worthless data before it is combined.
3. Whatever the right and wrong of copyright law (and I believe you have to have suffered FINANCIAL loss to sue under copyright law, which is designed to protect the financial investment of the companies or individuals who publish) this is a major PR blunder of the first water so far as Ancestry is concerned.
4. Considering some of the results of searches posted above it's pretty darned worthless as well.
Posted by: Hal Whitmore | August 28, 2007 at 07:56 PM
I agree with Mr. Eastman that much of what we contribute is not subject to copyright but the exceptions do become important. Simply because I work with the researchers both on my family site and county sites, there is material online contributed by third parties who have generously shared their copyrighted material for the benefit of local researchers and I know of 2 books that I have online now that are very recent publications that are still widely available for sale. They are NOT public domain and they do constitute original material vs.simply births, deaths, and marraige data. One is a delightful and well written book of growing up in a small southern town during the 1920s. I have another book that is not online that may become a best seller just because it is such great reading. While I do have written permission to use it, I can not and will not betray the trust and generosity of the author by putting it online. What people will do to provide information and education is indeed laudible and should be free from exploitation for profit. Bottom line, it was a badly conceived idea and badly implemented. I have requested that the cached copyrighted material from my sites be removed from cache. I have already removed the actual materials since I do owe that to the contributors. I seriously fear it will dampen the enthusiam some have about providing information based on the belief it might actually remain free. This is the trust that was broken by Ancestry.com and it was done without prior notice, apparently feeling that once they had all the data they wished to glean, it would be too late to worry about what their users and customer base actually wanted.
Apparently they do realize how must controversy this has generated since they did announce today that they have decided to make it a free service and now you can actually see where the information is being hosted. That was not possible under the original roll out version. However, now, if you click the links to see the actual pages on my service, they are gone so all that remains is what they are holding in cache. I have asked that the copyrighted material from my private domain be removed from their cached online material. We will soon know if they will recognize that they too should have higher ethical standards. I don't mind a free search engine but that is not the way they wanted it to work.
Posted by: yuteva | August 28, 2007 at 08:15 PM
I'm the President of USGenNet.Org, which is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit web host for genealogy and history sites. Thousands of pages on multiple domains on our server were taken by Ancestry without asking and without permission. Our published Conditions Of Use Policy clearly states:
"You may not use USGenNet’s services or resources, including any websites, mailing lists, message boards or other Communication Networks, to publish, post, transmit, distribute or disseminate the proprietary information of any others, including trademarks or copyrighted information, without express authorization of the rights holder. You may view, download, and print material from this site only for personal, noncommercial use."
Since USGenNet relies entirely on donations to pay the expense of hosting sites, Ancestry has cost us badly needed donations. When somebody sees the one page they needed on Ancestry, they no longer have a need to visit that page on our server.
I have already been informed by an attorney that we have a good case if we decide to file suit, and if Ancestry fails to remove all the copies they took from our server, then we will indeed seek legal remedy.
Posted by: Ginger Cisewski | August 28, 2007 at 08:47 PM
Ginger,
Thank you for your comments regarding USGenNet.
As a contributer to the site,I would like to see all of my hard found research remain free for all to see online,regardless of any "search engine" that lands on those pages of data.
I freely transcribed and uploaded that data for exactly that reason.
Posted by: Marianne Fisher | August 28, 2007 at 09:23 PM
This post on ancestry.com explains why I can now see my own page on Ancestry when just yesterday I couldn't...
http://blogs.ancestry.com/circle/?p=1785
including
>>Ancestry.com recognizes the significant time and resources members of the genealogical community invest making family history information available for free online. Ancestry.com spends hundreds of thousands of dollars each year to support and protect the valuable information found on RootsWeb. We also provide many free collections and free tree-building features on Ancestry.com.<<
Roger
Posted by: theKiwi | August 28, 2007 at 10:20 PM
I'm a bit confused with the outrage here.
#1-Why did you web page owners put genealogy information on the web?
#2-Do you or do you not want researchers to find your web pages? If the answer is yes, what would you think if the world's highest traffic genealogy web site were to give your web page free publicity by pointing millions of researchers to your web pages? Would that be a good thing?
You couldn't buy such exposure. Golly, you'd think we were a bunch of grumpy old scrooges hoarding our own personal stacks of researched names, many of which we found on Ancestry.com.
Posted by: tsherman | August 28, 2007 at 10:34 PM
The fact that several people who have posted thus far have said that they are taking down their website content is a perfect illustration of the reason why it is essential that companies like Ancestry.com create caches. Without caches, web content is here today, gone tomorrow.
Free caching sites like archive.org try to cache the entire web, but focus primarily on larger websites. Thus, I see what Ancestry.com is doing as being a service to me -- they are focusing on caching only those sites of perceived genealogical value.
I have yet to see a post from anyone claiming that Ancestry.com crawled pages on their website that had a robots.txt file expressly prohibiting the crawl. You can put up whatever Terms of Service you want on your website, but spiders are highly automated -- they look only for robots.txt files. If your robots.txt file does not prohibit crawling, then your site will be crawled -- not just by Ancestry.com but by dozens of other companies. Why is everyone piling on Ancestry, but not on Google? I see no difference between them in what they are doing.
Posted by: Amanuensis | August 28, 2007 at 11:11 PM
Excellent! I see nothing wrong with Ancestry.com or any company providing an additional service for their paid customers. Apparently, many people here disagree with me. In any case, it is now a moot point. As Roger pointed out, Ancestry.com announced a short time ago that the new search engine is now free and open to everyone. Details are available at http://blogs.ancestry.com/circle/?p=1785
So your genealogy web site has been available on Google for some time.
So your genealogy web site has been available on Yahoo for some time.
So your genealogy web site has been available on MSN Search for some time.
Your genealogy web site is now available on Ancestry.com.
What's wrong with that?
- Dick Eastman
Posted by: Dick Eastman | August 28, 2007 at 11:25 PM
Dick - Moot point or not, legal or not, by initially charging for content created by other people Ancestry has not endeared themselves to many members of the genealogical community. I want people to find my webpages. I want people to use that information. I'm not going to "take it down" or install a robots.txt file to prohibit them or any other search engine from providing links to my site. That would be stupid and defeat the purpose of publishing it in the first place. The problem I had was that the pages, as they were first displayed, were made to appear as though they were content on Ancestry.com and the link to the "live" page was not obvious. A big blunder on Ancestry's part. Sure. Am I going to cancel my subscription? Not likely.
Posted by: Becky Wiseman | August 28, 2007 at 11:51 PM
Dick, are you deliberately being obtuse?
Posted by: Shawshank Redemption | August 29, 2007 at 12:59 AM
Dick: My father was Warren Dow Eastman, born 8 August 1908 (the eighth day of the eighth month of the eighth year) in Corinna, Maine. The above is a fact. . . and facts are not owned by anyone. They are in the public domain, at least in the United States.
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. A Christmas newsletter is NOT a fact. A photo is NOT a fact. A narrative written about one's ancestors is NOT a fact. All of them are creative works subject to the copyright laws of the US and other countries. Whether those copyright laws are violated by Ancestry displaying those copyrighted works in an Ancestry frame is a matter for those with more legal knowledge about intellectual property rights than all those who have posted a comment here combined. Given the scale on which Ancestry is operating in this regard, it is certainly a serious enough matter to seek a legally informed opinion about. It may be time for collective action instead of individual complaints.
Posted by: Oxa | August 29, 2007 at 01:00 AM
Dick, How would you feel if your website were cached into Ancestry's site? It's driving folks away from our sites. I think it was not well done on Ancestry's part and I just can't understand how you can think what they did was okay.
Sorry, but I disagree with you and so do over 500 webmasters who spend a lot of time and money to put it all online.
Posted by: Debbie Axtman | August 29, 2007 at 01:14 AM
Dick, How would you feel if your website were cached into Ancestry's site? It's driving folks away from our sites. I think it was not well done on Ancestry's part and I just can't understand how you can think what they did was okay.
Sorry, but I disagree with you and so do over 500 webmasters who spend a lot of time and money to put it all online.
Posted by: Debbie Axtman | August 29, 2007 at 01:14 AM
I love it when I find my Web site on search engines. But even free, what Ancestry has done is not the equivalent of a search engine. Search engines make it clear that the pages they show are not owned by their organization. Even if you are viewing the cached version, the original URL is prominently displayed by the search engine provider. Search engines do not call your search results a collection.
No, facts cannot be copyrighted. Many people have "stolen" my research without attribution; and although they are rude and poor documenters as well, there is nothing I can do about it.
However, my own Web site contained original writing including biographies I had written of ancestors and an autobiography that my late mother wrote. I put it on my Web site because she mentioned so many people she had known while growing up in a small Southern town. These parts of my site are clearly subject to copyright. The fact that I do not charge for access, that I do not suffer monetary damage if these works are copied, does not alter their protected status even if enforcement of that status is difficult or impossible.
It is instructive to compare the source notes that Ancestry includes for various items. For instance, for Ohio deaths it shows this source information:
Source Information:
Ancestry.com and Ohio Department of Health. Ohio Deaths, 1908-1932, 1938-1944, and 1958-2002 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: The Generations Network, Inc., 2006. Original data:
# Ohio. Division of Vital Statistics. Death Certificates and index, December 20, 1908-December 31, 1953. State Archives Series 3094. Ohio Historical Society, Ohio.
# Ohio Department of Health. Index to Annual Deaths, 1958-2002. Ohio Department of Health, State Vital Statistics Unit, Columbus, OH, USA
Ancestry makes no effort to make you think that it somehow owns Ohio death records. Furthermore, it provides the information you need to properly cite the Ohio death data you find.
However, in the "Internet Biographical Collection" there is only this generic source information:
Source Information:
Ancestry.com. Internet Biographical Collection [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: The Generations Network, Inc., 2007. Original data: Biographical info taken from various English web sites. See specific website address provided with each entry.
The Web addresses aren't exactly provided, and yesterday it was somewhat difficult to find the real URL as opposed to the cached one. Furthermore, the information wasn't taken from various sites; in effect, the sites were taken.
Calling this a "collection" does imply ownership by or affiliation with Ancestry.com. Why do so many of us object to this? Because it's not true. And, yes, being mere mortals, we do like to get credit for projects we spend hours of our limited lifetime on, even if some of you do think our work trival and our attitude "whiney."
Ancestry.com couldn't even bother to classify the "collection" logically, grouping it with birth, marriage, and death records. If nothing else, Ancestry is guilty of poor research methods.
Posted by: Sara Binkley Tarpley | August 29, 2007 at 02:15 AM
Charging members $$ for information they entrusted to The Generations Network Inc. (TNG) for so many years? How do you justify that? More importantly, will the original information owners receive any kind of royalty from this scheme? No? Why am I not surprised?!
FYI, if you dig deep enough in their Website, you may discover that TNG's Privacy Policy statement opens up with "The Generations Network, Inc., operator of this site, recognizes the confidentiality of information that may be disclosed by members in registering or making purchases from our Website and we are committed to protecting your privacy." Too bad this opening statement's interpretation is left to TGN, and not to its members.
Given that public interest TV shows have proven that scammers worldwide actually use Ancestry.com to find - for example - your mother's maiden name to reply to a predetermined question when you ask for your credit card's lost password, expect TGN to claim that this is one reason for them to charge for the information - if it hasn't already.
Imagine: making money off of scammers! Now that requires big steel ones!!
Posted by: Pierre Fortin | August 29, 2007 at 09:32 AM
---> Dick, How would you feel if your website were cached into Ancestry's site?
But it IS cached and I am delighted! In the past, I have even paid money to get my web sites listed.
My web sites (I own about twenty web sites, not all of them are genealogy-related) are also cached at Google, Yahoo, Dogpile, the Wayback machine and dozens of other search engines. Long before Ancestry.com started their new service, I worked long and hard to make sure that my sites all were indexed and cached by as many search engines as possible. When I first heard of Ancestry.com's new service, the first thing I checked was to see if they had found this newsletter site and indexed that. Luckily, they had.
I even once paid a significant amount of money to a Search Engine Optimization "expert" to get my sites listed on more search engines and higher up the lists. (He failed and I got rid of him, but that's another story...)
My purpose of creating web sites is to obtain as many readers as possible. I don't care if they come from Google or from Ancestry.com or from Dogpile or from another web site or or from someone's personal blog. I don't care if the new readers come from cached pages or not. I simply want readers to read the information I post online.
In my opinion, the intent of placing any kind of information on the Web is to make it available to as many people as possible. I don't care how the people find my information, I just want them to find it! The more avenues available, the better.
Please feel free to copy articles from my web sites and forward them to others, post them on your sites, post them to newsgroups, add them to search engines you own, anyplace at all. You will be helping me by reaching even more people than I can reach by myself.
I do have some information I don't want shared. Trust me, I will never place THAT information anywhere on the Web!
- Dick Eastman
Posted by: Dick Eastman | August 29, 2007 at 02:30 PM
---> Dick, How would you feel if your website were cached into Ancestry's site? It's driving folks away from our sites.
In my case, it drives MORE people than ever to my sites. Ancestry gives me a LOT of free publicity and I am delighted. I cannot afford to buy that amount of advertising.
- Dick Eastman
Posted by: Dick Eastman | August 29, 2007 at 02:33 PM
I don't subscribe to anything having to do with Ancestry.com and never will. I've spent too much time at historical societies and libraries to give my information to Ancestry.com so that they can profit from it. Personally I think that all genealogy enthusiasts should withdraw any support to them. It's plain to see that they are a company that just wants more and more. Their greed has taken all the fun and privacy out of genealogical research. I can't understand why every venture that I have come across with Provo, Utah on it has greed or fraud written all over it.
Posted by: D.L. Godfredsen | August 31, 2007 at 07:05 AM
D.L., deciding whether or not to subscribe to Ancestry is of course a decision each person has to make on their own. But perhaps you would not have needed to have spent "too much time at historical societies and libraries" if you were a subscriber.
Personally, I think "all genealogy enthusiasts" are cutting off their nose to spite their face if they don't support/subscribe to Ancestry. Sure, they want "more and more" but then I want more and more too, so it works out very well for me because they give me more and more. As for privacy, I have not the slightest interest in what you have found in your research unless we have a common ancestor or parellel lines from the same small town. And if we do, I think it is unethical to not be willing to share. Sharing is what MAKES genealogy fun.
It was interesting that you accuse all Provo, UT business ventures of being frauds. I guess that means that World Vital Records and Footnote are fradulent, since those firms are also headquartered in Provo or its suburbs.
http://www.worldvitalrecords.com/about.aspx
http://www.footnote.com/contact.php
Oh, and the employees of HeritageQuest and Everton also are based in Utah (although the HeritageQuest corporate headquarters are elsewhere) as of course is also the case with the LDS Church's FamilySearch.org. About the only major genealogy firms that are not based in or near Provo are GenealogyBank and NewEnglandAncestors.
Posted by: Amanuensis | August 31, 2007 at 04:05 PM
Amanuensis,
I'd be hard pressed to call someone unethical just because they don't want to share their research findings with everyone who asks for them. People have all sorts of reasons for doing their research. Sometimes giving it all away is not one of them. I know that Ancestry feels that way. At least from the giving side, they seem pretty keen on the getting side!
If someone doesn't want to share their research, that's fine. It's not too hard to look up records. Probably most of what most people have is publicly available anyway.
Posted by: Dino (All Dino, All the Time) | August 31, 2007 at 05:14 PM
Dino, I was not saying that people should give their genealogical information to just anyone who asks for it. I thought I was pretty clear that I was speaking only of a situation where two people share a common ancestor or likely do further back in time, based on having ancestral lines from the same small town or village. In that type of situation, I do feel it is unethical for someone possessing possibly unique information to not be willing to share it. Obviously, the person making the request has to also be willing to share, and to be willing to reimburse the giver for their time. People do not "own" their ancestors.
Posted by: Amanuensis | August 31, 2007 at 11:11 PM
Amanuensis's "signature" links to http://www.apgen.org/directory/search_detail.html?mbr_id=820, the entry for a professional genealogist named Chad Milliner.
I googled "chad milliner." The first result is a listing for Chad Milliner on zoominfo. It says that Chad Milliner is a Content Specialist for THE GENERATIONS NETWORK, aka MYFAMILY.COM aka ANCESTRY.COM!
Posted by: Joy Rich | September 19, 2007 at 03:46 AM
Amanuensis (Chad),
I agree that people do not own their ancestors, but they certainly do own their own research and can decide what to do with it.
What is the difference between the genealogical research someone does and the research that drug companies to in developing vaccines? Basically, nothing. Both the genealogist and the drug company are using their skills, education and resources to discover new information or new ways to use existing information. I'm sure that you would not propose that a drug company make all of their research freely available to any other company who wants to share with them. Or companies developing new military weapons. Or government agencies collecting information on terrorists. etc.
As for 'possibly unique information.' Let's face it, there really isn't much of that around that cannot be discovered by doing the research for yourself, or by hiring a professional researcher who is better versed in the area or era to find the information.
Other people's laziness is not a valid reason for someone to share their information.
Posted by: Dino (All Dino, All the Time) | September 19, 2007 at 09:34 AM
I uploaded a Gedcom to World Family Tree in 2003. I was close to diabetes, and still learning how to use FTM, so it was too hasty. Within months I asked them to remove it, and again in 2006. I know their disclaimer--I did not understand every part of it, though that is my fault--yet there are many contracts with such disclaimers, and yet ways to get things changed. Also, some disclaimers do not hold up--after all I can't get my tenant to surrender certain rights, no matter what disclaimers he signs. Is there a way to petition genealogy.com? I don't mind at all paying a fee for removal. But so far it seems that the company takes a "screw you" attitude. Does anyone else have experience with negotiating about this?
Posted by: Thomas | January 15, 2008 at 01:06 PM