APG-L Archives

Archiver > APG > 2004-07 > 1088888785


From:
Subject: Copyright discussion
Date: Sat, 03 Jul 2004 15:06:32 -0600 (MDT)


I also believe that it is appropriate to discuss copyright issues in this forum,
so long as we make it clear that we are not offering legal advice (except of
course for those APGers who actually are attorneys). I am disturbed by the
organization in Washington state, not only because of what they are doing, but
also because they appear to be using a name that many would find confusingly
simular to business names used by Heritage Productions and by ProQuest. Perhaps
they have licenses for the use of the name "Heritage Quest" and of course it is
also possible that they were using the name first. I don't know.

Someone asked, in essence, what is the difference between what Heritage Quest (of
Washington) is doing and what we all do as professional genealogists and records
specialists. The most important difference is, when I copy pages from a book for
a client, it is incidental to what the client is paying me for -- research on
his/her ancestry.

I don't solicite book copying orders. I have gotten a few unsolicited copying
requests, but where no research component was involved, and where the material to
be copied was a published work still copyright protected, I instead did a quick
search on www.bookfinder.com and/or amazon.com and found in all such cases that
copies of the work was still for sale, somewhere. In most cases, the cost of
buying a complete copy of the desired work was less than what I would have
charged for copying pages from it. I send e-mails to the people requesting
copying of this type with the URL where they can order the complete book. I
don't charge for doing this (it takes only a couple of minutes) and merely
request that the person think of me the next time they want a professional
genealogist to do work for them. I feel that doing this has generated a lot of
good will.

This thread: