TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Read My Words; Don't Copy Them

ADVERTISEMENT

By SHARON TATE MOODY, Tribune correspondent

Published: February 10, 2008

A friend in Georgia contacted me a few weeks ago, asking me to recommend a lecturer whose program tape she could buy for her local genealogical society meeting. Her plan was to play the tape and have members participate in a discussion on the topic.

For those of you not familiar with how national conference lectures usually work, the sessions are recorded, and tapes are sold so those who couldn't attend can get the training. These tapes are sold online by the organization sponsoring the conference or by a special vendor contracted for that purpose.

Her inquiry allowed me to strongly discourage her plan. She was disappointed in my advice but relieved that I stopped her from violating the law. Lecture tapes are labeled (albeit in fine print) as being "for personal use" and that "unauthorized use without the written consent of the authors is strictly prohibited."

In other words, they are protected by copyright.

Her explanation of why she wanted the tape - the society could not afford to pay for the professional lecturer to travel to Atlanta to give the lecture in person - supports why it is illegal to use it as she intended.

One aspect of being a professional genealogist is that we travel and present programs across the country. Societies who invite us to present programs must pay for our airfare, hotels and meals and a fee for our services.

It's a stiff expense for small sponsoring groups. If societies could purchase a tape or download a lecture from the Internet for less than $10, fewer of them would expend the funds to fly us in for personal lectures.

Lecturer fees vary from about $75 to $250 per presentation. That sounds expensive but is below minimum wage if you consider the hours of research, planning and writing that go into preparing one hour-long presentation.

I strongly urge you to order lecture tapes because they offer great education for the price, but purchase them only for personal use.

What's Available?

The only 2006 national conference in which lectures were recorded was the Federation of Genealogical Societies Conference in Boston. Those lectures are available through Lulu online at stores.lulu.com/fgs2006. Download them for $1.99 each.

In 2007, the National Genealogical Society recorded, but the federation did not. The society's tapes are available through Jamb Tapes online at jamb-inc.com (click on "genealogy"). These tapes are $12 per lecture.

Prior to 2006, Repeat Performances recorded and distributed lectures at both national conferences. Conferences stopped using this company after disputes arose because lecturers said they were not getting royalty payments for their lectures. The company continues to sell the old lectures, however, for $10 each at audiotapes.com.

Another point of caution to those of you who attend lectures: You cannot legally record the lecture without permission of the person giving the presentation. Sometimes announcements are made prior to the lecture that recording is not permitted, but recording is not legal even if no announcement is made.

I appreciate very much when a member of the audience comes to me and asks permission to record the session. Sometimes I say no, and other times I grant permission - it depends on the circumstances.

For example, a gentleman attended one session because his wife (who had registered and paid to attend) was ill. He was not a genealogist but told her he would take notes for her. I gave him permission to record the session for her use only.

Ownership of intellectual properties confuses many consumers. The term "intellectual property" basically refers to creations of the human mind. Intellectual properties with which the family historian might deal include a written report, a photograph or a lecture.

Anytime you go online and cut and paste someone else's words, you basically are violating a copyright law or stealing intellectual work. Facts are not copyrightable, but how those facts are explained is. If you find an ancestor's date of birth in someone's work, you can take that date and put it into your report. (Hopefully, the writer gave a source for the fact and you verified it.) But if you take a sentence in which he added his own thoughts or explanation of the birth, you've crossed the line of what is acceptable.

When you find an interesting how-to magazine article and make copies and distribute them to your friends, you have violated copyright law. The magazine likely paid the author to write the story, and either the magazine or the writer owns the words you are copying. You cannot legally copy them without permission of the owner.

Reproducing Heritage Hunting

Many of you write or tell me you save copies of my columns for later reference. The Family History Center near me keeps a notebook with all the articles.

On one of my recent trips there, a worker told me she went to a local office-supply center to copy the articles she had clipped. Some were too large to fit on a letter-size page, and she wanted to reduce it in size so it would fit in the notebook.

The store would not let her copy them because they are copyrighted. She was upset with the store about this.

I explained to her the copy center was correct and that before she could copy she had to get permission from The Tampa Tribune. She told me later that she contacted the paper and got permission to make one copy for her stated purpose.

Many of us are tempted to make those copies and to share them. It is so much easier than writing a letter or sending an e-mail requesting permission. But if the tables were reversed, how would you feel if someone copied your research and incorporated it into his without crediting you? If you have published your work on a personal Web page, chances are someone has harvested your work.

Let's all support each other in our hard work - whether it is done by a professional researcher/lecturer or a hobbyist family historian.

If you aren't guided by copyright law, be guided by the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Sharon Tate Moody is a certified genealogist by the Board for Certification of Genealogists. Send genealogy questions and event announcements to her in care of BayLife, The Tampa Tribune, 200 S. Parker St., Tampa FL 33606 or stmoody0720 @mac.com. She regr

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT