Don't people realise how much it hurts

[VivienR]

I am curious to know where you find Ancestry's rules about taking or as you say "stealing" photographs. It is actually easy to see who owned the original photograph. It says on Ancestry who posted the picture  originally and I think if the original poster removes the photograph it is removed from every one else's tree who attached the photograph to their tree.

Vivien

And yes, Ancestry does make it too easy for people to steal photographs, and it is also a breach of Ancestry's rules to take them without the permission of the original owner.  The problem is that the practice is now so rife that it's often hard to trace the original owner of many photos.

[Rishile]

This would all be helped a lot of Ancestry were to be more accurate regarding their subscribers.

Many times I have seen a message on my home page saying 'Genie' (or whoever) has added a census record for John Smith to his/her tree in the past two days.  When I click on Genie's profile it tells me that he/she hasn't logged in in the past six months.  In fact, my own profile tells me I haven't logged in in the past six months yet there's hardly a day goes by that I don't.  If we were able to, accurately, access whether these tree owners are currently researching or not, it would solve a lot of problems.

Rishile

[flipflops]

The problem for many of us is that, usually for the most altruistic of motives, we've put our information 'out there' with the hope of contacting other people researching our lines and hopefully share information, but by doing so we make it far too easy for any anonymous person to glean information without ever contacting us or sharing what they know.

I really don't understand why so many people don't want to share but it's been my experience that they don't, so as things stand the only answer is to keep our trees private which I imagine goes against the whole idea of Ancestry, but what the hell

[Nick29]

I am curious to know where you find Ancestry's rules about taking or as you say "stealing" photographs. It is actually easy to see who owned the original photograph. It says on Ancestry who posted the picture  originally and I think if the original poster removes the photograph it is removed from every one else's tree who attached the photograph to their tree.

Vivien

And yes, Ancestry does make it too easy for people to steal photographs, and it is also a breach of Ancestry's rules to take them without the permission of the original owner.  The problem is that the practice is now so rife that it's often hard to trace the original owner of many photos.

It is tucked away in the Terms and Conditions, and the whole area surrounding this is a bit 'grey' because copyright laws vary from country to country, and Ancestry is an international site.  In the UK, the copyright on photographs is 70 years fom the date that the person who took the photograph died (unless he/she had sold the copyright to a third-party).  If the photographer is unknown, then copyright extends from the date that the photo was taken.  So, most of the photos on Ancestry will already be free of copyright restrictions, but from experience I can tell you that if you make enough fuss with Ancestry they will try to 'persuade' the offenders to remove the photos.  If the theft of photos is important to you, then you should consider putting fairly obvious watermarks on your photos saying something like 'Taken from ....... without permission", but of course this is fairly useless if the horse has already bolted, as it were 

[treeworm]

Recently I found that my dad's photo has been attatched to two different trees on ancestry, along with all of the photos and stories that I had on my gdfather and gtgdfather. Since I'm not a paying subscriber at the moment a friend sent them a message saying that I was eager to get in touch..and to see how were we related.
Unfortunately they haven't replied, which most likely means that not only are we not related, but that they KNOW that we aren't  related!!! (otherwise the'd get in touch) And therefore know that the data they have is wrong!!  Perhaps, giving them the benefit of the doubt, that originally they thought it was correct and can't be bothered to eliminate all 'their' hard work....but come on guys....it takes two mins to write and explain, hey, I'd even help them find their own kin.

I believe that most of the errors on trees can be excused....there is a lot of dta and it can get confusing..but what can't be excused is the lack of communication ..which is really one of the basis of genealogy...and a  'Please', a 'Thank you' and a 'Would you mind' do wonders for getting information!!!

Gillian

[VivienR]

I just really don't understand why people would post a  tree on Ancestry and not respond to emails but I've had that happen too.  It's frustrating. Fortunately I've had more people reply than not.
This may not be the reason they are not responding but I recently changed my email address and didn't realize just how many places I had to change my address.  Maybe they are away, or ill or....? 
Vivien

[tedscout]

  When I click on Genie's profile it tells me that he/she hasn't logged in in the past six months. 

Dear Rishile,

If you don't log out your log in date is the date you last logged in. I just looked at my profile and I hadn't logged in for the past six months. So I logged out and logged back in and now my profile says I last logged in Today.

 , Cheers, Ted

[Rishile]

I didn't realise that Tedscout - but that proves my point.

There's a difference between 'JohnSmith hasn't logged in for six months' - implying he hasn't used Ancestry - possibly due to his subs running out and 'JohnSmith has been logged in for six months'.  This would imply he uses Ancestry regularly so it could be worth trying to contact him.  I have never bothered trying to contact anyone who 'hasn't logged in for six months' assuming I wouldn't receive a reply.

Silly me!!   

Rishile

[J11]

Not so silly.  When I had my 2 weeks free subscription, I didn't even realise this facility existed!