Genealogy and Copyright

This morning I read an interesting blog post by Judy Russell, the Legal Genealogist - to read Judy's full post please use the following link : Judy G. Russell, “About that swiped photograph…,” The Legal Genealogist (https://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog : posted 30 April 2021)..  Judy's post prompted me to think about photographs and images I use in my own genealogy, and whether I have properly documented and cited them.

For the most part I am all good (phew..) and have recorded where/when I found things, not reused photographs and images in ways I shouldn't, and have kept well within the guidelines of the websites I use.  Should I ever decide to PUBLISH my research, however, I will need to do a lot of backtracking and permission gathering.

Many of the websites I have used for my genealogical research - and the physical repositories, archives, libraries, cemeteries and so on - allow for the use of the materials they hold for personal use only.  So while I can download images and data for my own family history research, I cannot use them in a published book, even if it is only a very limited publication, without first obtaining their specific permission.  I also cannot upload them to another website - for example taking an image from Ancestry.com and uploading it to my tree in  FamilySearch.

Judy places emphasis on the need to check the terms of use for the websites we use, and make note of how the images and information they contain can legally be used.  While the temptation to use shortcuts can be enormous, if those shortcuts mean we are violating someone's rights or the rules of a website, we open ourselves up to legal action.

Copyright and Terms of Use can be confusing and difficult to navigate, but the bottom line will always be that it is doesn't belong to us and we do not have proper permission, we shouldn't reproduce, reuse, or upload photographs and images without checking first.  And if in doubt, just don't.

Australian Copyright Laws Amended

Big news for Australian genealogists came on the 22nd of March 2017 when the Copyright Amendment (Disability Access and Other Measures) Bill was introduced to the Australian Parliament.
The Bill ends antiquated provisions in the Australian Copyright Act that provide perpetual copyright for unpublished materials, no matter how old they are. As a result millions of historical manuscripts such as letters and diaries held in our National and State/Territory libraries and archives, and thousands of theses at our universities, will be freed into the public domain on the 1st of January 2019.  This will include all those old letters sent to government departments or shared between family and friends decades ago that have until now been restricted by the old copyright laws.  See the media release from the Australian Libraries Copyright Committee.
With the boom in digitising and making available online so many collections of old documents, these amendments will allow researchers to access a huge amount of material that has been restricted and clear up a lot of the confusion that surrounded the use of unpublished material.
Roll on January 2019!