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

[Benjamin Webb]

To be honest, I don't really know either. I only really know from certain
discussions on Wikipedia. The best thing to do, in my opinion, is to let
people import GEDCOMs from anywhere until we get some sort of complaint, and
then think about what we are going to do from there.

On 27/03/06, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
>
> 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
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>