Here's an idea that might calm us all down and prevent the worst excesses of what a few of us feel is "borrowing" (to put it politely) someone else's hard-won and in many cases, expensive research.
If we don't want our long years of toil to go to waste but by the same token still have it preserved for future generations, and at the same time we don't want to see our stuff splattered all over the 'net without even a passing reference to our own hard work, the best ways are this (a) leave it in your Will to all your peer group relatives and their descendants so if you go under a bus tomorrow, no-one has to try and pick up the bits (metaphorically, not literally - yuk) (b) lodge it with the Society of Genealogists in London.
They have nothing online bar their publication catalogue - if you want access to any other data you either have to go to London and look it up yourself or pay to have the material copied and sent to you. Thus, only the serious researcher is going to do it - any freeloaders looking to create a surname list that is bigger than anyone else's won't bother.
Judging from the general tone of this thread, and my own previous comments, it seems that what's causing the most resentment is the time and money put into a piece of work that is then spread about like so much strawberry jam by someone who either wishes to claim it as their own research and/or has made no input whatsoever into the creation of it; and whilst we are all interested in sharing info with people whom we feel are genuinely interested and have a genuine link to the family, this surname-harvesting lark is a pain in the bum, quite frankly.
As for trying to sell our research and trees on EBay, what can I say - if this isn't a cynical and parasitical method of making a living for doing absolutely nothing whatsoever towards the end product, I don't know what is. Lesson here is if you don't want to be taken advantage of, don't post it on the 'net.
My problem was that I didn't post anything online - a genuine relative with whom there was actually a common proveable link received my work via e-mail and took the liberty of putting it up without even bothering to inform me, let alone ask, and upset a good few people along the way including me because he was told where he needed to stop, and took no notice. As a few people have said, you can't prevent people looking up stuff and posting it - but as I knew there was no way he'd have got some of the detail without a visit to the UK or getting it from me, I knew I'd been sucked dry, and when the point came that it was apparent more info was available at his end but that I had not been contacted, merely left to find out by chance, I knew I'd been had. This does rather negate the concept of sharing, if one party gives everything and the other decides to start holding out on you - when it ceases to be reciprocal, you know you've got the losing hand.
As for being precious about it - if anyone feels I need to get over myself, I'd just like to point out that an expenditure of over £700 on certificates alone to get the true picture of the family as it was at any given point between 1837 and 1910 when a trip to the Records Offices was not possible is not small beer - any more than one could say that of the hours and days spent in the Records Office at times when it actually was possible - sorting out the Land Tax, Poor Rate, Tithe Apportionment, Bastardy, Settlement and Removal orders, Churchwarden's Accounts, Manor Court Rolls, Copyholds and Leaseholds, Wills and Probate, Parish Registers, old newspapers and so on.
I like to think I'm an historian as well as a genealogist, albeit an amateur - I don't care a twopenny damn about how many people are on my tree as long as I know something about how those that are there lived, where they lived, how they made their living and so forth - otherwise it really would be just a list of meaningless names to no good purpose.
I'm probably about to join CatOne on the parapet, but at the opposite end of the barbed wire...!
(should I duck now?!)
