Who owns the genealogy? and Why?

In my last post, I addressed the question of who owns the genealogy?Ownership of the information is an interesting question. As an example,The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) microfilmed theSwedish Church records. A copy of the original microfilms is in theFamily History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah. Another copy went to theSwedish National Archives. The Archives then "sold" the rights to thesefilms to Genline.com. Genline then digitized the microfilm records andput them online in a subscription Website. Now, there is no doubt thatthe LDS Church microfilm made a valuable contribution to theavailability of Swedish records around the world. It is also undoubtedthat Genline made a huge contribution by digitizing the records andmaking them available online. But to the average genealogist,researching Swedish records, the net effect is that you pay to go toSalt Lake to view the records, or you pay to rent a copy of themicrofilm and have it sent to a branch library, or you pay for access toGenline and get the information online.

None of these entities, the LDS Church, Genline, the Swedish NationalArchives or anyone else can be said to own the Swedish Church Recordsand if each of those entities had not contributed time and money to thepreservation of the records there would be no justification for imposingany kind of charge for viewing the records. Unfortunately, many recordrepositories charge to view records. For example, try to get a copy ofyour own birth certificate. You may end up paying from $5 on up for asingle copy. Does the state own your birth information? Do you own yourown birth information? In this context the question of who owns what aresomewhat meaningless. The state has the copy of your birth record andif they want to charge you to obtain a copy, there is no one, short ofsome legislative act, to stop them from doing so.

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Comments

William Douglas June 10, 2010 at 3:54pm

It is a good question, James.

Often I find that Genealogy.com subscribers think that their data is theirs, and will not be shared. It can be difficult to persuade them otherwise!

William
www.douglashistory.com

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