We’ve mentioned this before, but it bears repeating:<\/p>\n
facts cannot be owned and facts cannot be copyrighted<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I can spend $20,000 on research and documents in order to establish that Thomas Fakeancestor was born on 12 June 1802 in Nosuchtown, Vermont. I can spend months analyzing those records. I can give myself high blood pressure in my attempt to pin down his date of birth. But…<\/p>\n
That fact is not mine to control. Once I share it with another human, post it online, etc. any one can “use” it without crediting me. If I don’t want anyone else to possibly “use it” without crediting me, then I should keep it to myself.<\/p>\n
Would it be nice if people gave me credit for making the discovery? Yes.<\/p>\n
Would it genealogically ethical for people to give me credit? Yes.<\/p>\n
Can others use the fact without my permission? Yes.<\/p>\n
The forty-five page analysis I wrote of the documents used to reach that conclusion is something that I can own and have the copyright to.<\/p>\n
But the fact no.<\/p>\n
Otherwise someone could copyright 2+2=4.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We’ve mentioned this before, but it bears repeating: facts cannot be owned and facts cannot be copyrighted I can spend $20,000 on research and documents in order to establish that Thomas Fakeancestor was born on 12 June 1802 in Nosuchtown, Vermont. I can spend months analyzing those records. I can give myself high blood pressure […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8275"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8275\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}