Who owns the genealogy?

During the past few posts, I have been examining who owns the genealogycompanies. What I find is a mixture of huge multinational corporationsand family owned businesses. I did have an ulterior motive in examiningthe ownership however, I had several larger issues to discuss and neededto know a little background before I jumped into the controversialarena. When you realize the diversity of the ownership of the largergenealogy companies, you can imagine extending the diversity to thehundreds of smaller business organizations in today's genealogymarketplace.

The first question is this: Who owns the genealogy? If I do someresearch and identify my grandparents, do I own that information? Imean, not in the copyright sense, but in the real down-to-earth personalcontrol type ownership. If you have ever thought about the subject ofownership, you probably realize that the whole concept is defined by thesociety you live in. The whole concept of private ownership is societalbased. Now, let's think about owning genealogy. Do I own my research?What rights do I have as a result of having done the research? Again, Iam not talking about the statutorily created concept of "copyright" butthe idea of ownership. In my experience, most people would claimownership of anything they felt they had either personally created orobtained through purchase or as a gift. In contrast, what if you werehired to do the research? Would you feel the same sense of ownership, orwould you acknowledge that the person that hired you owned theresearch?

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Who owns the genealogy?

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