Oh No ...... Pirates !!!

Q. What is a Pirate or Pirating ?
A. Pirating is when someone illegally takes, either knowingly or unknowingly information or photos from your site and then reproduces it on another site; then takes credit for the information they copied. This does not include individuals who are using this information to build their own private family trees. That is why we put the site up. We wanted to give folks the ability to share their information and be contacted by other families researching the same groups.  If you are in question, just ask us!

Q. Who are these pirates
A. I call them number counters and lost souls. They may think they are doing a great service in entering tons of information or even photos that they have lifted from other sites, but they are not.

Q. What's the big deal about pirating?
A. Well, it affects everyone in more ways than one.

Q. How does it affect the volunteers, historians and researchers?
A. Because it is extremely frustrating to those that have spent countless hours and dollars researching the families of that particular county. Although you might live in a totally different area and even another state, you are stealing from those that are working on building histories of the county. Most people that pirate do not even show the courtesy to either link back to us or show us as the source.

Q. How does this hurt private individuals trying to build their family trees?
A. They won't know where the information came from and what else we may have found on a particular family. So the additional information we have, us as historians and you as researchers, may fall into a chasm never to be recaptured.

Q. Is copyrighting on the net really a serious and legal issue.
A. Well, this attorney that wrote this article says it is. Take a few minutes and read
What is Copyright Protection? ( Link: off site at: http://www.whatiscopyright.org/ )
By the way, he gives his permission to anyone that wants to link to this great article.

Q. How can I correct this error if I have already taken information without permission from this site.
A. Remove the information.

No information should be stolen from this site for another site. This includes any other site that does not have their programs set up to link back to us as the source.

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