| Most of us put things on the Internet because we want to share them
with others. Our websites then become public information, though not public
property.
Found something you really like, and want to add it to your site? Why not link to it instead? It's much easier and perfectly legal. Copyright laws are designed to protect the rights of authors, musicians, artists, and others against the loss of their work, rights and profits. Upon conviction for breaking these laws, the penalties in time and money can be severe. If you are interested in specific details, see http://www.whatiscopyright.org/ or go to Google. Plagiarism or stealing someone's work and trying to pass it off as your own, is not only against the law, it just plain stealing. The genealogical community won't like you very much, nor trust you either. So don't become known as a thief or an outcast. Just because it's on the Internet, doesn't make it public property.
For our purposes in history and genealogy, it is usually enough to recognize that facts and most public data cannot be copyrighted. For example, General Robert E. Lee was born on 19 January 1807. His ancestors and descendants are a matter of record. Nobody can copyright any of those facts. However, the way in which an author chooses to display that information, by text, by grid or chart, or whatever, is the author's creative contribution and that can be copyrighted. So, when you find something you like and would like to share it with others, then the best way is to link to it. That way you are not taking possession of it, you are not claiming it as your own work (even by implication), you are not depriving the author of his creative right. After all, this is part of the reason the author put it there in the first place - that it might be seen. What's more, it's perfectly legal, you have a clear conscience, it's as fast as if you had it on your own site, and of course, you save yourself a lot of work copying it. Put this sentence on your page where you want the link to be: (a href="URL")Name(/a) Then substitute the URL and the Name. The URL is in the thin window at the top of your screen on the page to which you want to link. The URL, or Universal Resource Locator, enables your computer to find things again. The URL usually begins with http:// or with www or with both. Copy it exactly. Copy-and-paste usually does nicely. The Name is whatever you want to call it. It doesn't have any effect on the author's work. But instead of the 4 parentheses ( )( ), use 4 angle brackets < >< > on your page. It's just that if I used angle brackets here, the computer would try to link to a nonexistent file called 'Name'. It's really quite easy. As you see, I used links near the top of this page and again at the bottom. A link is usually underlined and in a slightly different color. The "Name" for your link can be one word or several, as you prefer. Why not try it out? You are welcome to link to this page if you'd like. |