Private vs Public
After years and years of working in a Family History Center, it has only now come to my attention that the pictures in a Living person's Memories page are not Private unless you mark it so. And even then, they are only redacted and could be brought "to life" again if someone is so talented. But mainly, I never knew I had to go in an do the marking to Private. I would like to see it made Private in Living Memories to begin with - and THEN mark Public if wanted.
Also, the process for marking My Memories "Private" - is not easily found. Perhaps it could be done much easier? I assumed I could mark them all at once within my page, but it has to be done in Memories.
And how about making a new campaign going out to all the Family History Centers or to each email, reminding people that Living Memories are not Private unless manually done.
Thank you.
Comments
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I've read your question through several times and debated whether or not to make any comments since I really don't have much to say that will actually address your concerns. But I am concerned that your comments suggest that there are some basic facts about pictures that you have overlooked all these years.
First off, the ability to mark a photo Private is a very new ability. It was just a few months ago that that was added. Until that time, from the very beginning of Family Tree Memories, all photos have been public and there has certainly been plenty of information about that fact out there, such as the notice that appears every time you add a photo you your gallery which states: "FamilySearch is a family-oriented site and is intended to be appropriate for all ages. All added memories are public." (Emphasis added.)
Secondly, although it doesn't appear so, the Memories page for any profile does not actually contain anything. It only contains a reference to an item in your, or someone else's, gallery. You upload photos to your gallery directly then tag it to add that reference to a profile's Memories page or you can upload a photo to your gallery from the a Memories page which automatically attaches one tag to it for that profile then allows you to add more tags.
This is why you can upload a photo and have it appear on twenty different Memories pages without uploading it twenty times. It only actually exists in your Gallery and those twenty profiles just reference it through the tag.
Having a photo automatically marked private whenever it is linked to a living person's profile would be very counter productive, particularly if it is also linked to 19 other deceased people where there is no reason to have it private.
The third item that I think you might be overlooking, is that if you have attached a tag to a photo in your gallery for a living person, only you can see that tag. If anyone else looks at that photo, they will not see that tag and will have to idea who the person is.
Lastly, the process for marking photo private should take a bit of work. People should be discouraged from doing this because they need to sit back and think. If it is so critical that a photo remain completely hidden on FamilySearch, then what is it doing there in the first place? If there is something about a photo that requires it to be completely private so that only the person that uploaded it can see it and no one else, not even any other close family, should ever be allowed to view it on FamilySearch, then why on earth would you ever upload it?
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If there is something about a photo that requires it to be completely private so that only the person that uploaded it can see it and no one else, not even any other close family, should ever be allowed to view it on FamilySearch, then why on earth would you ever upload it?
Photographs are protected by copyright. Since there is not currently a FamilySearch implementation of copyright licensing whereby photo owners may attach various use licenses - the assumption by FamilySearch users may be that they can use photos in any manner they wish. The FamilySearch Terms of Use certainly grant such full license use to FamilySearch itself - but only non-commercial personal use is granted to other users. Thus marking a photograph as Private essentially allows the uploader/copyright holder to retain distribution right - they can decide who they send the photo to and have it stored on the site for FamilySearch use. This brings up the common question of what happens to Private photos/Memories when the copyright owner passes away? I suppose FamilySearch could then use their full license to make them Public. It might be nice to allow users to specifically select - probably in user Settings/Permissions - that FamilySearch can change them to Public upon their death - that way it is known that they so wished such to occur.
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