copyright

[spendlove]

Hi,

Not sure if this is where this should be posted so apologies if incorrect.

It is about a public Family Tree on Find my Past.  A member has entered details on their tree which has been obtained from a recently published article.  They have failed to acknowledge where their information has come from and that it is copyrighted.

Google says you can enter a correction to this tree, even though it is not yours, cannot work out how to do this. Does anyone know how this can be achieved?

Spendlove

[Alexander.]

I think you may be confusing copyright and plagiarism. Information in itself cannot generally be copyrighted. What sort of information did they include on the tree that you think is copyrighted?

There is no mandate that someone must cite their sources on their personal family tree. Of course it would be nice if everyone did cite their sources.

If they have posted an image or copy of a copyrighted work that you feel shouldn't be there, then you can simply contact FindMyPast support to get it resolved.
https://www.findmypast.com/help/articles/115004852045-how-can-i-contact-findmypast-

[Creasegirl]

Usually in the copyright statement it says that information can be used for personal study etc. The main thing usually is that the information is not used commercially and thats where you would need to apply for copyright and cite the source. So there would be no issue what the person has done.

[Andy J2022]

Alexander is right. Facts and ideas cannot be subject to copyright, only the expression of them. Since a family tree consists of facts (names, dates. places etc) the contents, wherever they are obtained, are not subject to copyright.

However there is one caveat when it comes to copyright in the UK: Crown copyright. Crown copyright covers any work made by an 'officer or servant ' of the Crown in the course of their duties, ie civil servants. This means that a compilation such as an enumerator's census return is protected by Crown copyright even though it is essentially made up of facts. In contrast the information in the household census returns we see in 1911 and 1921 is not subject to Crown copyright because the author of the work is the head of the household, not a civil servant.

The other right which sometimes applies is database right. This can exist to protect the contents of a database, even though those contents may be classed as facts, provided that the database owner has expended "a substantial investment in obtaining, verifying or presenting the contents of the database".  Investment in this context refers to financial, human or technical resources. Taking a substantial part of a database can amount to infringement of database right if done without permission. It would not infringe database right to merely extract and reuse a few specific entries which applied to someone you were researching for instance.

[spendlove]

Hi

Thanks to you all for your replies.

Now understand this quite complicated situation.

Will make contact with the owner of the tree and suggest they make reference to the article and authors where information was obtained.