Re: Genealogy and copyrights

Bruce Bertram wrote:
>
> As indicated in my previous message, I've copied a few pages from a
> couple books. I'm not relying on Feist as I'm giving the
> authors/editors the benefit of the doubt. They didn't merely publish
> a compilation of facts a-la the phone book. They collected and
> published biographical information about people, including, in some
> cases, photographs. I'm not sure if the original poster had this in
> mind, but I assume it is the case in many instances.

I think that the situation you are describing is different than what I think of as a "lookup." There are a lot of genealogy books that are indexes of public records, such as deeds, wills, census, etc. that would be similar to a phone book. On the other hand, some books are written more like a history, with prose that describes events and people. A "lookup" could be to the index of such a book. I wouldn't rely on Feist in those situations. Fair use, however, should allow you to photocopy IF you are not planning to republish as the material appeared in the book and don't copy huge sections, but rather if you simply want to refer back to a small portion of material during the course of your preparation of a family history. Copying a copyrighted photo? Tougher to justify on a fair use basis-though if not republished not too bad in my mind.

Any thoughts on this analysis????

Jett Hanna
Austin, TX
<jettplane[_at_]aol.com> Received on Thu Oct 31 1996 - 12:44:49 GMT