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

[Robert Scott Horning]

Benjamin Webb wrote:

>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.
>
>  
>
Any patents or copyright claims on the GEDCOM file format itself is not 
really the point.  This is an open international data format standard 
that has widespread support and usage from many geneological computer 
users, including many for profit and non-profit groups.  Royalties have 
never been assessed for using the data format itself and likely won't be 
either.  Trust me when I say that the internal politics of the LDS 
church would simply not allow formal royalties to be charged for it 
either, and there are geneological groups involved with the development 
of that data standard that have nothing to do with the LDS church 
either, although that is who has organized conferences and groups to 
discuss development of this standard.

The copyrightability is more toward the data itself, and if databases of 
factual data can be copyrighted.  The current political movement within 
the USA is to permit copyrighting such data, although traditionally 
common law rulings in U.S. courts is to deny such records for copyright, 
such as the copyrightability of names and phone numbers in a telephone 
directory.  That in this case the information is based on facts that 
originated prior to the 20th Century gives an even weaker claim to the 
copyrightability of this data.  I don't know how far the push toward 
copyrighting databases has gone, as that would take somebody who has 
really been following the concept in legal circles, nor do I know what 
the status of that is outside of the USA.

-- 
Robert Scott Horning