Ray Saintonge wrote:
Simply asking a person's permission would simply
lead to chaos. The
person whom you ask may agree, but his brother may not. A 110 year rule
may be a little excessive. The US census, for example, is in the public
domain after 72 years. BMD announcements in newspapers are all a matter
of public record; telephone directories, property tax records and the
Social Security Death Index are all publicly available sources of
information.
Ec
The point of the 110 rule is that it does fit with almost all known
privacy laws throughout the world, and for geneological research
purposes is generally not that big of an inconvience. Finding
information for people who lived in the past century is usually fairly
straight forward and can usually be done by asking a close relative that
has personal knowledge and information about that person, or there are
extensive public records as you have pointed out. And keep in mind that
the "rule" included allowing information about people born more
recently, it is just that you had to have a clear death date to do so,
such as from something like the Social Security Death Index or probate
records (both public domain information as well).
I don't know how useful telephone directories would be for geneological
purposes other than to confirm that somebody with that name lived in a
certain location, and perhaps they had a close relationship (not
necessarily marriage) with somebody else.
--
Robert Scott Horning