Please note that the genealogical database and and other material on this website
is copyrighted.

Photos, comments, and genealogical information that you send to Anisnisnaabe.net, Ojibwe.info, or to me personally, remains yours.  Your sending it gives us the right to post it on these websites, but you still own it.  The website copyright gives you protection from others using (or abusing) your family history and other material.

Copyright on the Internet is sometimes misunderstood - so here's a brief summary:

     ° Putting something on the Internet is just like another kind of publication.  People's work is automatically copyrighted.

     ° "Fair Use" means that you may use excerpts in reasonable ways, for non-commercial purposes.   In order to comply with 'fair use' standards, you must include the source that you got the information from.   For the Internet, the general practice is to include both the URL - the Internet address (for Anishinaabe.net, that's http://www.anishinaabe.net), and the date that you downloaded or copied the information.

     ° You may not copy entire web-pages and re-publish them on another website, you may not present these genealogical compilations as your own work, and you may not data-mine this website for commercial or any other purposes.

     ° You also may not 'hot-link' anything.  Hot-linking is using HTML codes or scripts to include our web-graphics, etc. on your web-pages, forum posts, etc.  Don't even think about it.  If you hot-link to images or other material, we reserve the right to 'switch'  (it's easy, it's still on our webserver) to something so personally humiliating to you, that you will want to take it off of your website.

We are not making this up.   Below are a few exerpts from an article by Thomas G. Field, Jr., at Franklin Pierce Law Center.   We've highlighted some important points.  Click the links to see the original posted by Professor Field.

Introduction

... Copyright gives authors, artists and others the right to exclude others from using their works. Federal rights arise automatically when a protectable work has been fixed in a tangible medium such as a floppy disk or hard drive. A poem or picture is as much protected on a disk as on a piece of paper or canvas.

Fair use.

Fair use is one of the most important, and least clear cut, limits to copyright. It permits some use of others' works even without approval. But when? Words like "fair" or "reasonable" cannot be precisely defined, but here are a few benchmarks.

Uses that advance public interests such as criticism, education or scholarship are favored -- particularly if little of another's work is copied. Uses that generate income or interfere with a copyright owner's income are not. Fairness also means crediting original artists or authors. (A teacher who copied, without credit, much of another's course materials was found to infringe.)

Commercial uses of another's work are also disfavored. For example, anyone who uses, without explicit permission, others' work to suggest that they endorse some commercial product is asking for trouble! Yet, not all commercial uses are forbidden. Most magazines and newspapers are operated for profit; that they are not automatically precluded from fair use has been made clear by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Licenses implied in fact.

Fair use allows limited uses of another's work without approval, but other uses may be approved by implication. For example, when a message is posted to a public email list, both forwarding and archiving seem to be impliedly allowed. It is reasonable to assume that such liberties are okay if not explicitly forbidden. However, when forwarding, archiving or, say, using part of a prior message to respond to an earlier message, be careful not to change the original meaning. No one impliedly authorizes another to attribute to them an embarrassing (or worse) message they did not write!

Authors' Rights

Registration.

Although web pages and email messages are protected as soon as created, copyright registration is needed before U.S. owners can bring suit. Also, prompt registration provides remedies that make lawsuits affordable. Statutory damages of $150,000 (or more, and attorney fees) for willful infringement can be obtained if published works are registered within three months, or unpublished works are registered before they are infringed.

Notice.

Copyright notice is not required in the U.S. For many years, however, that was not true. Notice will rebut lingering notions that works published without notice can be used by others without restriction and reduce infringers' ability to claim that their use was innocent.

 
 Links and Frames: Caveats

Links and frames present problems that seem unique to the internet. While typical links to others' sites are unlikely to cause copyright problems under present law, several caveats are warranted.

First, if one directly links to content that would normally be framed elsewhere, its owners are apt to object. There is little law directly on point because most parties involved in such disputes have settled. Still, if a linking page surrounds other's material with its own ads, cuts out another's ads or makes it appear that the linking site is the source of the linked material, trouble is likely. It is difficult to argue that otherwise implied permission to link could be reasonably expected under such circumstances.

Second, consider situations where linked material infringes another's copyright. Ordinarily, a copyright holder would act only against the directly infringing page; others would be unaware of the dispute. However, where direct infringers are, say, beyond the reach of local courts, and particularly where a site owner actively encourages use of an offending page, there is a solid basis for protest. Unless copyright infringement has been actively encouraged, however, prompt removal of offending links should minimize risk of suit.

Third, while most web owners would complain about copying, some may complain about linking when it burdens their servers or, in the case of images, because it does not credit them. If that information is not posted, it is best to ask the owner. Still, no one should copy, even from sites that urge it without considering whether site owners hold copyright.

Finally, copyright is not the sole legal basis for objection. Anyone who makes derogatory references to others (or their sites, products or services), however it is done, invites trouble.


User's Risks -- The Bottom Line

Those who copy others' text are ever more easily found with search engines. Titles, markers and the like may also enable owners to locate improper copies of sounds or images.

Copyright law precludes most uses of others' works without explicit or implied permission.

 ----- 
1. From "Copyright on the Internet," by Thomas J. Field, Jr., Revised July 23, 2006. http://www.piercelaw.edu/tfield/copynet.htm, accessed April 10, 2007.
Earlier versions of this discussion have been published in Intellectual Property Counselor (BLI, June 2001) and elsewhere.

Professor Field is at the Franklin Pierce Law Center, Two White Street • Concord, NH 03301 • 603.228.1541
His article "Copyright on the Internet" is © Franklin Pierce Law Center 2002-06. All rights reserved.