Ancestry.com and picture of sources

Question

Is it legal to copy a page from a church registry found on Ancestry and add it to a profile on Wikitree ?

Answer 1

No. That would be in breach of Ancestry’s Terms & Conditions. I would recommend that you cite the church registry as a source and add a written transcription of what you have read.

Comments

Thanks for the best answer acknowledgement Anne.

Answer 2

Portion of Ancestry Terms and Conditions (emphasis added):

"Ancestry does not claim an exclusive right to images already in the public domain that it has converted into a digital format. However, the Websites contain images or documents that are protected by copyrights or that, even if in the public domain, are subject to restrictions on reuse. By agreeing to these Terms and Conditions, you agree to not reuse these images or documents except that you may reuse public domain images so long as you only use small portions of the images or documents for personal use. If you republish public domain images, you agree to credit the relevant Ancestry Website as the source of the digital image, unless additional specific restrictions apply. If you wish to republish more than a small portion of the images or documents from any of the Websites, you agree to obtain prior written permission from us."

If the document/image is not copyrighted, then it is not a copyright violation to post it on Wikitree.  It is not the responsibility of Wikitree users to police Ancestry's terms and conditions, but Wikitree's Honor Code would apply to giving credit to Ancestry as the source of the document.

Comments

Perhaps you should have highlighted the last sentence which indicates that you need written permission if you are publishing more than just a snippet of an image.

---

The last sentence does not refer to "snippet of an image" but says "small portion of the images or documents".  Their intellectual property claim is regarding the collection of documents they put together.  They don't want users to republish documents in bulk without permission, for example, the census records for an entire town.

But again, these are Ancestry's terms for its users and don't apply to Wikitree.  Regarding the original question, there is no legal issue with posting a copy of a page from a church register found on Ancestry, assuming that document is not copyrighted.  If that were the case, fair use rules or permission would apply.

---

I read the term small portion as relating to an individual image, hence my use of the word snippet.

Any potential legal issue woutd be if Ancestry ever decided to take action against someone abusing their T&C rather than being at the Wikitree end of the process.

Answer 3

I know this is an old 2017 G2G posting, but I just had to comment.  I have found many a photo or clippings on Ancestry that had been posted by me or another relative on other sites before Ancestry took those sites over, and also for that matter myself or known relative in past few years have posted them on Ancestry. So those photos and clipping belonged to us first, and we placed them out there, I had on the other sites back in the 1980's had always posted please use with permission for family genealogy use only, but not for profit publications.  Well, Ancestry collects all those, and charges people to see and use them, so they are doing so for profit.  I know a few lawyers in town that could argue both sides on this one all night if you keep buying the rounds.  I made the call to use any of my own, or those given to me, or permission given to me by relatives to use photos and clippings anywhere I wish.  I could go on in much more detail, but I think I got my two cents worth of copper out ...

Comments

I agree, it annoys me when they want to charge me (or anyone else for that matter) for a photo that I actually posses but that I had uploaded to another site to be freely available for others.