Links are prohibited by Find my Past website [closed]

Question

Everyone needs to read through https://www.findmypast.co.uk/help/articles/4411066891409-2-obtaining-access-to-and-use-of-records and particularly the portion that indicates 

Except to the extent expressly set out in these terms and conditions, you are not allowed to.......

• create links to the Site from any other website, without our prior written consent;

Comments

It is almost like they don't know how the internet and the law works.  There is no way they can enforce that.  And didn't you just break that rule by linking to their site?

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Did they tell that to FamilySearch?

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I suppose Family Search might have "prior written consent"...

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They can enforce it by terminating your account.

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Yes, Robin appears to have broken the terms of service by giving the link. So would anyone mentioning on a website the existence of FindMyPast in general terms, if they include a link to the FMP home page. If FindMyPast wish to go out of business, enforcing this rule is the way to achieve that.

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@ Michael and all

I do not have an account, so, I am not sure what the enforcement would be....

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Quite, Robin. Just shows how absurd the rule is.

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Looks like they have a Pay-Per-View option, so an outside link to a specific item could bypass that, thus they would lose the income for that view of record (s).

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Could someone test Danielle's theory? (I'd be happy to if someone has an example; I do not have an FMP membership.)

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I can't provide a link to a Pay-Per-View result, but for testing use by non-subscribers, here's a link to a record transcript that I accessed through my FMP login: https://www.findmypast.com/transcript?id=GBPRS%2FD%2F403452902%2F1 . That record is "Transcriptions © Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire Family History Society" (referring to the partner for this week's WikiTree Challenge) so I hope the data owner won't object to my sharing the link here.

I don't see anything in that link that identifies me, but I do know that when I run a search on FMP, FMP shows an indication of results I have viewed previously (even if the access was years ago), apparently based on history for me that FMP has saved.

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It didn't let me see anything. I was presented with a login screen.

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same here, got log-in page and nothing else.

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Same here, Ellen. I get the login screen if I am not logged in and the subscription signup page after I log in to my free account.

I suspect that only logged-in paid members can see their images now, even from old links.

Answer 1

All is well. I contacted FindMyPast, specifically mentioning giving weblinks on other websites to FMP records etc, and have had a response back which says "We welcome you to share links to allow others to locate records themselves that they can then view with their own subscription or payment option via Findmypast." So we can continue giving FindMyPast links without any qualms.

Comments

I just got a message with the same "OK"

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Then they should clarify their T&Cs. As mentioned in my answer below, I contacted Judy Russell for her opinion on Mastodon. She answered me saying:

"@athletespw @wikitree I'd say it's pretty clear that, unless the record is in the free sets, you may not reproduce the item outside of FindMyPast: "You may also assist friends and family with their family history by telling people about the Records available on the Site and how and where they can be found." That's as far as you can go -- telling folks how they can gain access, not reproducing it.

But I will rely on Michael's and Robin's OK for now. I don't plan to get a subscription there anyway. 

Answer 2

Thanks for digging into their TOS pages for us, Robin.

Rules are rules.

Answer 3

Geez.  Sounds like they are cutting off their nose to spite their face.  Should we suggest to them that we take down all our citations that use their excellent detailed index entries - which must lead people to join FMP - and instead replace them with the crappy ones from My Heritage?

Answer 4

I am not a subscriber to them. They don't seem to get that links create traffic. When they prohibit links, they will get less traffic, which means less income which leads to less money they can spend on records, which means they get less attractive to users... start above. Eventually they will be bought by another company because of that spiral.

Answer 5

Just a note with copyright, they most likely do not own the records as they are subject to "fair use" (federal records, etc).  They can only own the record if they modify it somehow, that it when it is subjected to copyright.  For instance, grab a Wiki Commons map image is free, but the moment it is modified to include details ... it is owned by whoever modifies the map (think of it like art).

This is why most sites provide links to their site, which generates traffic (and essentially $ for them if they have advertisements on their website.)

But, their rules are their rules.  My advice would be to alter your citation to include the original place where the citation is found, excluding that specific website.  This is perfectly acceptable as this document could be found by many other methods/websites.

Comments

Just to clarify, US rules don't apply to records from other countries. For example, Scottish census records are Crown copyright and the only place with images is ScotlandsPeople and they own the Crown copyright. At the same time they license access to the images.  

Also, be careful with the "art" analogy. Minor modifications aren't necessarily giving the modifier a new copyright.

Answer 6

After seeing this message, I tried my hand at researching an 18th century profile in the current WikiTree Challenge. 

I have a FMP subscription via my New York Genealogical & Biographical Society membership, and I like searching in FMP when doing UK research. I found some relevant content on Find my Past for my Cambridgeshire person (mostly index records, usually with multiple FMP entries for the same event, with nearly identical source information for the different entries).  Not being allowed to link to Find my Past made it very difficult to identify the specific sources. I did copy some of the transcript data from the records, to include in the citations,  but it appears that FMP may also forbid that.  I guess I need to hope that someone will replace my FMP citations with citations to the same records on a source like Ancestry.uk. 

Answer 7

What about all the thousands (yes, thousands) of FMP citations I have used over the past few years? Do I have to go and change them?

Answer 8

So, as written, even though the heading of the article indicates they are talking about records, this will also preclude one from linking to the root domain. Saying "https://www.findmypast.com/ is a great resource for genealogical research" would be in violation of these terms. Hard to believe this is their intent. Might be interesting to send a note to Judy Russell, the legal genealogist for her take. She tends to like analyze terms of agreements. Perhaps she would blog on the topic. Here is a sample of her posts on the topic: https://www.legalgenealogist.com/category/terms-of-use/.

Comments

I just sent Judy the link above via Mastodon to get her opinion about it.

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Thanks.

I subscribe to her blog so it will be curious to she if puts out a post on this. I truly appreciate her explanation of legal matters and assessments.

I am not a not a lawyer, but there is nothing I am aware of that prevents content in the terms and conditions clauses that are not legally binding. But they can be there for intimidation purposes.

Back in the 1980s, I signed an employee agreement that said if I left the company I could not ply my trade in a six county area of where lived in the Chicago area. Lawyers told me not to fear signing it as it was clearly not binding and was probably just being used for intimidation. I did. They had a downturn and laid off half their staff within a year (not me though).

So what would I really want if I was them? I would want to protect my intellectual property (IP). I clearly would not want people to take large swaths of information and cut and paste content from my site (particularly content that is unique to my site). At the same time I would want people to know I have that content and encourage them to subscribe to my site.  It would seem links to records on my site that are behind a paywall would encourage non-subscribers to join and not expose any of my data to non-subscribers.

Answer 9

With all the opinion and speculation here has anyone contacted Find My Past for clarification?

Comments

I sent them a polite but stiff email yesterday, asking for the reason why. I haven't had a reply yet.

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And I should add that should the reply be negative, it might be followed with an interesting discussion on why I am correcting their transcription errors for free!

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I also sent a note as requested, and have not heard anything.   I have also asked the WikiTree team to weigh in on this subject.

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I had a reply:

We have this within our terms and conditions to ensure the site is being used legitametly
 
In this case a link for a citation is acceptable so you will not be required to seek permission to use links to our site, in this manner