What is copyright?

If you publish a common genealogical artifact such as a tombstone image, and it is re distributed by email, "even if" it is then kept on your own desktop to study, (enlarge, enhance, translate), then the copyright has been violated. Jackie, that's what you're saying. I expect you intend to sue email and Facebook servers also?

How is it you are doing genealogy then? Genealogy is collaborative and communicative. This advocacy is not, nor is courteous, with is a golden rule.

Jackie, as I re-read the discussion it really comes out that you are a zealous defender and respecter of copyright. Good for you.

However, many people will choose to balance competing considerations.

If it's the only known picture of your great grandmother and the copyright owner is unknown or untraceable, some people will gamble on the picture having no commercial value and the unknown copyright owner(s) being uninterested.

That's not the legal answer, but some would argue it's the practical answer.

In our modern world, if an owner comes forward to issue a take down notice, that's easily handled.

In the US the whole area of "personal use" and "fair use" is still evolving to adapt to an electronic world where infringement is both easier and easier to trace. At the same time, millions of images are passing into the public domain each year.

What I hope from any discussion like this one is that people will learn enough to make some informed choices.

Email is and facebook act as common carriers, and they cannot be liable.

This is just the same thing as your local postal service is not liable if they deliver slanderous letter to your door, they are just the carriers.

Also, you are perfectly within your right to do anything you want to an image without violating any copyright... *as long as you do not make a copy of it*. Distributing it via e-mail is actually making a copy.

Think of it this way, let's take a book. I can write on the margins all i want, and the author cannot sue me for that. But then if i photocopy the book with my margin notes, and try to publish it, then it's infringing the copyright of the original author.

Where Jackie is getting confused (I think) is that she isn't taking into account that transmitting a file over the Internet involves many servers getting copies. Those copies are not publicly accessible, but they exist. It is not possible to remove all copies everywhere by making a demand for removal.

When you say "you are perfectly within your right to do anything you want to an image without violating any copyright" we should perhaps clarify that this assumes you've acquired the image legally. That's part of the point I was making when I said that someone could (probably) scan a copy to their own computer.

It remains unsettled, at least in US law, whether there is an unlimited right to make multiple copies for personal, non-commercial use. That has been one of the issues, for example, at the heart of copyright infringement cases over music recordings and it's why music companies have preferred to specify the number and nature of the copies in the purchase (license) agreement.

There is also the related problem of uploading a copy for personal use to, say, your private account at a document storage service, then sharing the folder with one or more people.

It's also unsettled whether emailing a copy is automatically a form of distribution. If I email a copy of an image to myself, I've made a copy but if I have a right to make a copy for personal, non-commercial use then I haven't distributed the image.

Along the same lines, if I email a copy to my wife and she receives it at our computer in our home, have I made a personal copy or have I distributed it? And, if she divorces me and takes that computer, is she legally obligated to delete the copy that belongs to me or is it one of my personal copies that I lost in the divorce?

I imagine you can play these legal guessing games as well as any of the rest of us. The point is that it gets tricky when people start using broad legal principles to make absolute judgments about individual cases.

No, Erica Howton, keeping a copy of the item on your computer, in your computer files, etc. is not copyright infringement. Publishing and distributing that item is.

I absolutely agree that "Genealogy is collaborative and communicative". When should that collaboration and communication begin? When you want to republish someone else's creation. Don't ask for permission to eat the cookie after the fact.

lets say you have a book were there are some photos the photos in the book are from 1930.and the people in the photo died more than 40 years ago.but the book was written by an author 2 years ago.

René Robert G S, the people in the photo don't hold the copywrite - the taker of the original photo did.

When the photographer dies, they pass copywrite to their beneficiaries.

I would assume that the writer of the book would have had to obtain permission from the photographer or their beneficiaries to include the photo in their book.

(Eg I recently took photos of players in a tennis comp (they all gave me permission to take the photos) and someone wanted to use the photos in a book. They had to get my permission not the people in the photos.

Some info on copyright: http://copyright.cornell.edu/resources/publicdomain.cfm

is it legal to copy from google books,and use it as information .

Facts can't be copyrighted. Their form (the exact text in Google Books) can, and usually is.

Photos on Findagrave -
Is there any difference between photos of gravestones vs photos of people on findagrave with regard to copyright?
Is it fine to use each type of photo from findagrave as a profile photo on Geni?
If so, is one supposed to use the attribution field, or is that totally optional, or?

I specifically asked about Find a Grave, because I do not know if they tell their contributors not to upload photos unless they are relinquishing copyright on them. Or, possibly they said that about gravestone photos, but not others.
Or are all photos on Findagrave copyrighted and not to be uploaded to Geni?
Or??

Seth - is "creating transformative use" a violation of copyright or something that is allowed?

And does "linking a photo of a gravestone to genealogical data" refer
pasting the link in the overview
Or uploading the photo to a photo on Geni
Or having Geni create a Document from the Photo
Or having Geni create a Document from the findagrave memorial
Ot?

Pasting link to this project here as it has much relevant info about Photos, copyright, and what should ho in the Attribution Field