U.S. litigation over the ownership of Pennsylvania public records digitized by Ancestry

Question

Thanks to the NEHGS "Weekly Genealogist" newsletter, I am alerted to a news story about litigation over the ownership of -- and access to -- public records digitized by Ancestry.com. This is relevant to the discussions we often have around here regarding copyright and the legalities of sharing electronic images obtained from subscription websites.

The article "Inside the Pa. court case pitting a genealogist against Ancestry.com" is at https://therecord-online.com/site/archives/103578.

It seems that the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission contracted with Ancestry to digitize a slew of historical documents and make them available on the Ancestry website. According to the contract between the PHMC and Ancestry, the digitized records are supposed to be free to Pennsylvania residents who create a user profile with Ancestry. Ancestry is asserting that it owns the digitized records and doesn't have to release them to a genealogist who doesn't live in Pennsylvania (although it appears that he's allowed to access them if he has an Ancestry subscription) and he is not allowed to download a batch of records.

I think this case has bearing (indirectly) on questions about other restrictions that entities like Ancestry (but not just Ancestry) place on access to content obtained from public archives.

Litigation is ongoing. Read the article for more details, and stay tuned for further developments!

Comments

I had not read about this case and will now follow it with great interest. Ancestry is a conundrum. While making many records available (for a never ending fee, though some of the same may be found at FamilySearch), they in my mind do extraordinary damage to the cause of genealogy by their very set-up and extremely poorly constructed algos for suggestions and 'hints'. It is unfortunate that current ownership finds the bottom line of far greater interest than improving accuracy (which, frankly, seems to degrade with time).

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I have another concern as well: I have a brick wall ancestor from PA and found that the records pre-1850 for PA are not only incomplete but most (if not all) the immigration records are useless. I use Ancestry for pre-1840 research and have found its records incomplete and poorly indexed. For example: Looking for John Wilson, immigrant from Ireland, approximately 1790.  When looking through PA immigration records, there are records but all they list is the name and year, of immigration, no other identifying info, so no way to place them with the proper John Wilson.  Sometimes they will give an approx. date of birth year, but nothing else. I'd been told years ago, by a professional genealogist that there was "some kind of major error when transcribing records in PA, and it cannot be fixed.." Although she didn't elaborate more, I wonder if this is part of the reason they don't want to release them?

Answer 1

Ancestry burns my butter. The social security death index used to be free and searchable until they let Ancestry get their greedy little fingers into it. So many historical records are blocked behind their subscription paywall that used to be available for free if you knew how to search for them. I'm in PA. I'm going to pull the lawsuit.

Comments

The social security death index is still free on family search.

Answer 2

Half of my ancestors were located in Pennsylvania, so this lawsuit is of great interest to me. I dislike having to have a membership in Ancestry just to access these records! It doesn't seem fair.

One of the reasons I moved to WikiTree is because of the documentation required, the public contributions to any profile that can make it a stronger one, and the CARE demonstrated in doing so. I believe in the goals of WikiTree and I am glad to contribute in any way I can. The feeling seems to be mutual, as I have also experienced incredible generosity from other genealogist at WikiTree. On Ancestry, I have found error after error in the Public family trees, and nobody there seems to care about the errors.