Copyright Discussion.
On each page I have placed the following notice:
Contents of this Website are subject to Copyright © by Philip Strong, & allow fair academic use.
Do you have information, opinion or a question relating to either this site’s contents or its copyright?
Please use the e-mail link available at the bottom of each page. I look forward to corresponding with you.
My efforts in sharing my work and copyright.
My starting place was a repository of family records and photos. What to do with this? My skills were teaching, scientific research, writing academic papers, computer skills and an interest in the human condition.
My answer was to create a website where family history is shared with rigorous academic citations of sources and targeting as wide an audience as possible…. not just a genealogy of births deaths and marriages with photos. My experience in publication and supervision of others’ assignments made me conscious of the legal and moral aspects of copyright. I did realise that “low impulse control” and lack of knowledge of the copyright of paper and online publications made my publication insecure. I did attempt to retain ownership of my publication, though if anyone wrote to me and wanted to use a fair and reasonable part of it in their own work, this was OK with me, with the usual proviso that they acknowledged me as the source. I would not agree to my material being used on Ancestry, since it would be copied and shared by many with no knowledge or care about where it came from. The “knowledge of where it came from” is important to the historian since it leaves the door open to correspondents who might give feedback.The virtue of my website is that I get a lot of people Googling, corresponding, then setting in motion new lines of enquiry.
Life is full of choices. My wife often criticises my time consuming choice when she says “Get a life!” Other people use their time differently and share the information from their repository of family records and photos by relinquishing copyright and placing them on AncestryCom. A good choice if they did not want to set up their own website. However, the resultant format does not end up as a family story. It takes time and technical skills to set up your website and write a family history.
Any image placed on Ancestry is on the understanding that the person who posts it owns it or the image is copyright free. From that point on, any such image is be shared freely within Ancestry. Regrettably many people on Ancestry extend this concept to think that anything published on the internet is theirs for the taking! Google would tell them the opposite. Note that AncestryCom backs up copyright claimants and enforces take-down of offending photos etc. placed on Ancestry if the offender does not cooperate!