Steven, your postings are truly appreciated.  Time and again I learn
something new.  And I thank you for all of your hard work.

I am not a copyright attorney; and I write this forum as a researcher
and fellow human being.

You can read all you want to about the law, but don't forget about
common sense.  As Steven has pointed out before, follow the money trail. 
And as another on this list has said, he and many others will continue
to copy things from various sources for personal use and not worry about
it.

I don't think copyright laws will be seriously detrimental to
genealogists.

The great majority of resources that we share in these forums are either
not copyright protected, or are not worth suing someone about.  Why? 
Because it would be extremely difficult to prove money damages to the
author in an amount sufficient to go to the trouble of suing.  Face it,
most of us are able to use just a small piece of information from a
large work.  And we are not going to make a great deal of money from
sharing that small piece of information.  And if we were lawabiding,
ethical folks, we would properly attribute our sources.  

I, too, am frustrated about the tremendous costs of research.  But
please have a sense of perspective.  I have been researching the cost of
publishing  the "INCIDENTS AND CHARACTERS" series written by my
gggrandfather.  While I am hopeful that a publisher is about to pick
this up as a worthy project, I harbor no grand illusions that this is
the next "GONE WITH THE WIND".  And meanwhile, I have had many, many
requests for the book when it comes out.  So I am trying to find out the
cost of self-publishing this work to have copies available now.  I am
discovering that at a minimum I am looking at $1500 and up to just get
out 100 copies.  So, I would have to charge $15 per copy to not even
break even.  (I have spent hundreds of dollars already in this endeavor;
thousands, if you consider the time I've put into it.)   And I have
copyrighted the material not because I want to exclusively own the
information (I did, you remember, make it available on the internet),
nor because I wanted money (I didn't charge anyone to read it) but
because I didn't want someone else taking my gggrandfather's works and
making a mockery out of it.

Broderbund invests a hefty load in its products.  We don't HAVE to buy
them.  They DO have competitors.  We CAN get the information in other
ways.  But we like the convenience that they offer.  So we buy anyway.

It seems that rather than getting all upset about the laws, let us
continue to legally share the information we have.  It is extremely
unlikely that most of us have been violating copyright laws in sharing
our information.

So, here's to the continuation of freely sharing information.  But
please also remember the costs in gathering that information in the
first place.  And Steven, thank you again for your hard work in hosting
this forum.

Elizabeth DuBois Russo

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