[Foundation-l] Rodovid.org, family tree wiki, wishes to become a wiki project

[Benjamin Webb]

When you import a GEDCOM to the Rodovid database, the information is
extracted and stored as wikipages, not as the GEDCOM, so the
copyrightability of the GEDCOM doesn't matter.

On 26/03/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
> Robert Scott Horning wrote:
>
> >I'd also like to give an example of the typical licensing terms for most
> >of these websites:
> >
> >http://familysearch.org/Eng/policy/FSI_terms.asp
> >
> >Note especially the clause:
> >
> >"All material found at this site is owned or licensed by us. You may
> >view, download, and print material from this site only for your
> >personal, noncommercial use or, if you are a professional genealogist,
> >for use by a current client."
> >
> It is often unclear just what is copyright in these sites.  Most claims
> of this sort are self-serving, and legally doubtful.  Whether something
> is copyright or not has nothing to do with this kind of statement.  If I
> were to contribute to such a project I would not be granting them
> ownership in my information.  Facts are not copyrightable, though their
> form of organization may be.  It all comes down to the status of GEDCOM
> files when accepted as a standard.
>
> >Compare that to the GFDL, and you will see that most data has been
> >signifcantly restricted for re-use in most cases, even if you were the
> >person who submitted the information in the first place.  GFDL (or
> >Creative Commons type licensing) is one area where sites like what is
> >being proposed here is going to blow all of the other geneology sites
> >out of the water.
> >
> Have any of these other sites tried taking people to court over
> copyright violations?  I would be quite prepared to overlook their
> copyright claims.
>
> >All of these are aspects that are derived from Wikimedia users'
> >experience with developing other on-line content.  The current internal
> >push for this sort of development is where users like myself have been
> >so used to how things are done with Wiki software that we wonder why
> >this isn't be done for geneological research, where these ideas of free
> >access to information and the ability to freely edit the information
> >havn't yet caught on.
> >
> Being able to freely edit is an important feature, but that opens up a
> wide range of other problems like our policies on original research.
>
> Ec
>
>
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