Copyright and Public Domain question
A family history report was professionally researched and printed for a family reunion in 1997. The report (over 100 pages) was entitled: The Descendants of John and Mary Smith (not the actual names - John and Mary were born about 1800). The couple who researched and printed the book are deceased with some living descendants. It would be great if the report were freely accessible to the numerous descendants of John and Mary Smith. Who might I turn to for advice on making the document available on the Internet, taking copyright and public domain issues into consideration?
Answers
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Hello Mark,
Here is an article which gives us information on how to donate books to the FS Library.
https://www.familysearch.org/help/helpcenter/article/how-do-i-donate-to-the-family-history-library
I was able to find this article through the Help Center on FamilySearch.org.
Help Center:
A great Research source is Help Feature on FamilySearch.org. Sign into FamilySearch.org and your Family Tree.
On the upper right near to your name is a ? Question Mark. Click on that and when the confusing down box appears, click on "Help Center" at the bottom. When it goes to the next page, put your question in the Search Box. It takes a bit of time, using different search criteria to get the result you want. But likely it is there, just a bit hard to find.
Enjoy,
Anitra
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This gets into somewhat of a gray area.
Surely it would be best to contact the descendants of the researcher (author) and see if they have any issues with you replicating the report. And if if it was me in your place - if neither they nor members of your extended family had any problems with that - then I would not have any issue in replicating it (but that it not legal advice on my part - that is simply me sharing my opinion.) [click on "expand post"]
BUT From a technical perspective - just because someone is deceased - does not mean that technically speaking their copyright is null and void - on the contrary it is probably still in effect. However - its not like there are "copy right police" scanning the Internet and ready to put you in jail - simply because from a technicality you dont really have copyright nor is the document in true legal "public doman"
In cases where people do sue for copyright - it is because they have a vested interest (ie. the author or estate of the author) and in most all cases - it would be because of financial impact to the original author or estate.
That being said - - I personally would not have any qualms about sharing it with extnded family. HOWEVER - if you were to donate a copy of the item to the Family History Library in Salt Lake - my experience is they would NOT make it digitally available to anyone - because from a technical perspective it is still under copyright (unless the researcher specifically stated the work was in the public domain).
They might accept a physical copy - but they wont distribute it digitally.
Also a few other points to at least be aware of is if the document has info for living persons. If this was the case - I would not post the portion of the document that had info on living persons.
Also realize that bare genealogical facts (names, dates, places, relationships) - cannot by themsleves be copyrighted.
Here are some related articles on copyright and genealogy.
They have really helped me out.
https://community.familysearch.org/s/feed/0D53A00004oXkEhSAK
Again - nothing here should be construed as "legal advice". and nothng here should be considered to be officially represetative of FamilySearch.org nor any of its employees. ( I am not a FS employee )
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