Genealogy research requires the use of a lot of information. It can be tempting to make a copy of something for a friend or relative to use in their genealogy research. Those who write a personal genealogy blog need to be very careful about exactly how you use certain kinds of information in an online blog. There are copyright laws that you should be aware of.
Some information is considered to be public domain, which means that it is acceptable for everyone to use this information however they choose to. You can include this kind if information in your online blog, without having to worry about breaking copyright law.
Facts are things that cannot be put under a copyright. Facts include information like a birthdate, the location where a person was born, that person’s day of death, and a person’s name. This means you are allowed to put this kind of information about your Great Great Great Uncle George into your genealogy blog. It also means that if you feel the need to include the birthday of another, unrelated, person into your genealogy blog, you can do so without breaking copyright law. This kind of information is considered to be public domain, which means that it is acceptable for everyone to use this information however they choose to. You can include this kind if information in your online blog, without having to worry about breaking copyright law.
It is also perfectly permissible for you to make copies of the story you wrote about something that happened in the life of your Great Great Great Uncle George, and hand it out to all of your cousins. This is your writing, and you are allowed to do whatever you want with it. What you are not allowed to do is to take writing that you find on some else’s genealogy blog or website, and copy it, exactly as it appears, onto your website. To do so would be against copyright law.
It’s also not ok to make a copy of information, or handouts, from a genealogy lecture that you attended, especially if there as an attendance fee of some kind. The lecturer was paid to come and share that information with a group. This is how he or she makes a living. The lecturer owns the information that he or she shared with a group. You cannot make a written or audio copy of any portion of the lecture, for the purpose of handing them out to friends or relatives that didn’t attend the lecture. This would violate copyright law.
Images on blogs are eye catching, but you must be careful about what images you use. Of course, you can use your own photograph on your own blog. If the image isn’t yours, then you need to make sure that you have permission to use it from the photographer or artist. One way to get that permission is to seek out the photographer, and ask him or her if it is ok for you to use that image in your blog. It’s also a good idea to use images that have been given a Creative Commons license. If you use those, make sure you include an attribution.
Image by Tim Morgan on Flickr