Policy Reminder: Don't Post Other People's Content Publicly
Please let me remind you that it is wrong to post other people's content on FamilyTreeCircles.
We state this simply in the <a href="http://www.familytreecircles.com/about.php">terms of use</a>
<b>8. You will not post any copyrighted material on this website.</b>
But maybe this isn't clear enough, so let me explain a bit further.
If someone has a website or a webpage posted somewhere on the Internet, the information they post there (unless they copied it from somewhere else) is theirs. You are not allowed to copy it and post it elsewhere without their permission.
I am not an intellectual property or trademark attorney, so I won't get into the legalities of this, but as the owner of this site, I will remove content that I believe has copied someone else's property. This can and will be just a judgement call by me.
Genealogy data gets copied around all the time, so I'm not talking specifically about names, dates, etc. I am talking about written prose, and larger collections of information that someone else has created.
<b>As a general rule, if you find yourself copying and pasting large amounts of information from another website to post it on FamilyTreeCircles, and you don't have the permission from the original author, it is probably wrong. Please don't.</b>
If you have any questions about specific cases, please just ask.
thank you.
on 2011-09-03 07:58:55
Scott Jangro is the owner of FamilyTreeCircles.com and has documented roots back to Mayflower passengers Stephen Hopkins and William Brewster. If you're wondering what he's doing when he's mysteriously absent, here's some links to other stuff he's responsible for: about.me/jangro.
Comments
Let me make a point of clarification here. Part of genealogy is finding information elsewhere and sharing it, say, in response to someone else's inquiry.
I'm not at all saying that is wrong. Bits of information found elsewhere, like some family information is not what I'm talking about, especially when posted as a comment in response to a post. If you do find yourself posting lots of content in a comment from another website, do the right thing and put a link to it.
What I'm specifically talking about here is full journals that consist entirely of content from other websites. There's really no reason for that and it doesn't serve any purpose other than to clutter things up.
One more thing....
If you're reading this wondering if I'm talking about you and I haven't already contacted you directly, I'm not.
reminder for newbies