Abuse of Copyright

Businesses like ours will only be able to keep publishing genealogical CD-ROMs as long as it makes sense economically, so we must insist that users be conscientious in observing copyright law.

These four uses are considered copyright violations:

• Systematically making a Family Archive CD available to more than one person at a time.
• Systematically making large parts of a Family Archive CD's contents available to others.
• Uploading all or part of a Family Archive's contents onto an electronic bulletin board.
• Circulating a printout taken straight off a Family Archive CD.

Examples of "large parts" that are too much to share are (1) the whole Family Archive CD, or (2) the results of more than two blanket searches (all or most records that match a search for a name, date of birth, or other generic characteristic). If someone else wants to use your Family Archive CD for such a broad search, they are clearly expecting to find a lot of useful information on it. That makes them a potential Family Archive customer, so allowing such free access to your Family Archive CD would be a violation of copyright law.

We trust you to use your best judgment when deciding what is and isn't acceptable use of a Family Archive CD. However, you should remember that when Family Archive CD owners ignore their responsibility, we can't renew the resources needed to keep bringing valuable data and software to genealogists.