I‘ve had the unfortunate experience recently of discovering that a great deal of content from Tonia’s Roots has been copied and pasted elsewhere, without my permission. I suppose this is a sign of the times we live in; it is so easy to copy and paste that people don’t think they need to do their own work.
I’ve asked the other party to cease and to remove my copyrighted information from the site where it has been pasted and that makes me feel like a bitch. Genealogists are a generous bunch and we like to share information. Part of me wants to just let it go. But there is a difference between information that is shared and content that is plagiarized.
I’m trying to tell myself that the person in question simply doesn’t know any better – even though I have a terms-of-use page that specifically prohibits posting my work on large commercial sites. So, I’ve reworked my terms of use and plan to add a more prominent copyright notice to each page of this site, including a sample citation. This won’t stop the people who really want to steal my content, but it may help to educate those who just don’t know better.
Genealogy is fun. It’s more fun when you do the work yourself, rather than just grabbing names and copying whatever you find. So, if you are newbie who is still collecting names, get out there and do some original research. If you don’t know how, there are a lot of webinars these days to teach you how to do just about anything genealogy-related.
Don’t be a copy-and-paster. Be a real genealogist.