Hacker News Reader

Comment by sneak | Hacker News Reader

It’s not stealing to make and use copies of data that is published to the entire web for anyone to see and download.

By that damaged logic, Google is “stealing” the entire web’s data by making a copy of it.

Seriously, this is what the internet is all about. Ancestry did nothing wrong. Why do these other website owners have to make the world a worse place for no tangible benefit and cause a stink? Just to feel powerful and spite a "big guy" for being big?

Totally agree, if ancestry was republishing these resources or they weren't freely available then it would be copyright infringement/IP theft.

But indexing the content so those records can be searched and linked to on ancestry's platform? Totally fair game. If you don't want people indexing your content put it behind a log-in, you don't even have to charge for it.

I think there's a fair debate to be had around google's use of 3rd pty content especially in an age of AMP links and rich results.

Though I agree ancestry.com is following pretty standard practices here (they're not charging, robots.txt is followed, sources are attributed and linked).

If the material is copyrighted then reuse should be licensed. Otherwise I believe you’re in breach of copyright — whether that technically falls into the category of ‘theft’, I’m not sure, but it’s not legal (outside of ‘fair use’)

American here - agree that copyright is important and has been trampled in the digital age.. however no one is innocent in this case, rather it appears to be a dog pile of commercial interest in public records. Ancestry dot com are crass commercial managers who took advantage of the commercialization of the web

source: the 90s purchase of the rootsweb mailing list assets by Ancestry dot com, their transaction records and subsequent paywall garden with lots of extras

Just because something can be found on the internet does not mean you can sell it without permission.

As the article says, Ancestry wasn’t selling this data and was linking back to where it had come from. Ancestry also says they will honor robots.txt with instructions not to scrape data.

You are right. I was just reacting to the idea that anything you find on webpage is yours to use without restriction. Think about pictures of my kids on social media!

Thank you for clarifying.

The OP wrote “make and use copies of data” — seems a reasonable response

Per the article they are not selling anything:

> Access to web records is free. No one needs to subscribe or register with Ancestry to view these records.

> Web records are attributed to the content publishers.

> They're easily available. Prominent links make it easy to access the source website.

> We follow web standards for restricting crawling (robots.txt files). If a website has a robots.txt file that prohibits crawling the genealogical records, we don't search those records. If records from your website are included and you'd like them removed, please send a request to websearch@an cestry .com.

Actually, it does. Facts can’t be copyrighted. If I find facts on the public internet, it’s legal to sell and use in most jurisdictions around the world.

If I don’t want the world to see material, I don’t give it away for free to everyone.

While an individual fact can't be copyrighted, a collection of facts does have database right protections in the EU & UK: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database_right

Yes that's true, but copyright is not the only restriction about the use of data you find online. There's trademark and privacy to consider. I don't think either thing is likely to apply to dead people :)

Trademark also doesn’t apply to facts. And if data is published on the open internet then privacy is most likely not an issue. The genealogy is already published in the open.

So I don’t think those elements are relevant to the conversation without more context.

I think this is the key point that lots of people need to understand.

Your photo of a headstone? You own the copyright.

Grandfather died on 9 June 1938 & is buried at X? Not copyrightable.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com