| On this website, Deep Roots in Hancock County, Illinois,
tombstone pictures (with the exception of two or three really old tombstone pictures), graphics and narratives were taken, created or composed after 1989 and are, therefore, afforded the protection of copyright.
Please do not reproduce these photographs for sale or profit; do not place them in a publication or on any other Internet site without prior written permission from Marcia Farina or the original owner/author/contributor.
Please do not reproduce family pictures for sale or profit; do not place them in a publication or on any other Internet site without prior written permission from Marcia Farina or other original owner/contributor. Please do not reproduce (or paraphrase) narratives for sale or profit; do not place them in a publication or on any other Internet site without prior written permission from the original author (in most cases, Marcia Farina.) Short excerpts are permissible as long as they are accompanied by a complete and accurate citation.
Every determined searcher will sooner or later discover text or images that are directly related to a research subject. To be an informed and ethical genealogist, spend some time learning about copyright. Facts are facts - they can't be copyrighted, e.g., Aunt Eunice was born in Bibbingham on January 1, 1850, and died there on January 1, 1925. See But if someone wrote a biography or essay about Eunice and you republish it, it's a breech of copyright if the original composition is not in public domain. That a composition appears on the Internet does not put it in public domain. If you take sections of text and republish and don't include an appropriate citation, at the very least it's unfriendly and impolite, it's poor genealogical practice, and at the worst it's plagiarism - the same as copying someone else's term paper and passing it off as your own. Biographies from the various history volumes of Hancock and McDonough Counties (1878, 1880, 1885, 1894, 1907, 1921) do fall in public domain; trusting a transcription from this website is a separate issue. See the link below to "RootsWeb's Guide to Tracing Family Trees" for an explanation of primary and secondary sources. What if there's a picture of Aunt Eunice? Or interesting memorabilia? First, thank your lucky stars. Old family pictures probably are no longer under copyright - this is more of an ethical issue. A very simple analogy would be if you were to walk into someone's home and take pictures off the wall or out of scrapbooks without asking. Write to the website owner: it may open a brand new avenue of research! Beyond that, if you're creating your own website, point your visitors to the interesting memorabilia, then get out there and find something new to contribute! If someone made the trek to Bibbingham and took a picture of Eunice's tombstone and placed it on the web, unless otherwise stated, that photograph is not free for the taking IF it's covered by copyright restrictions. There are many sites on the Internet that discuss copyright, but a goodly portion are written in legalese and/or are hard to understand.
Mike Goad is a respected writer of articles about genealogy and copyright issues. His website provides a wealth of information.  COPY RIGHT, COPY SENSE
Composed by Lolly Gasaway, the following linked chart clearly illustrates public domain, an integral facet of copyright law. WHEN U.S. WORKS PASS INTO THE PUBLIC DOMAIN
If you are a contributor to Find A Grave, you should be aware of their No photos taken from other web sites!!!
If you are a user of either Rootsweb.com or Ancestry.com, and/or if you have webpages on either site, you should be aware of the
A good discussion forum for copyright issues is the Rootsweb Copyright Mailing List, or you can search the mailing list archives. Click here for instructions.
|
| Return To Home Page |