Sunday, September 9, 2007

Eastman's Rules for Genealogy Data

Dick Eastman on his Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter has posted an excellent list of "rules" or guidelines for posting data on the Internet. The post is here. Be sure to read the comments to Dick's post.

I agree, in general terms, with Dick's rules about posting information online. However, my opinion is that when Ancestry cached and then showed the cached pages of information, and put it behind the subscription firewall, they crossed the line. They should have asked the specific web sites and data providers for approval of adding them to the collection, and they should have linked only to the web site - not to the cached page.

As it was, the data on the web pages was not stolen or hijacked like some people claimed - it was still on the original pages. It was copied and cached, then indexed, just like Google does. A Google search would have found them. And an Ancestry search would have found them (as a cached page).

Note also that Craig Manson has started his series on the Legality of what Ancestry did - see his first post here.

Back to the birthday party!

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