Copyrights of old materials from online subscribed services

Question

Hello,

I have a question that I hope someone here can answer. I know the general law, but the particulars, I'm not so knowledgeable on. I found a newspaper article from the Seattle Daily Times (still in business) dated December 1910 on Genealogybank. Can I copy the article and repost it with only citations without violating copyright laws or does Genealogybank hold copyright to that particular copy?

This article is a story about my grandfather and I'd like to summarize it and post a .jpg file from my computer of the article rather than link the URL for Genealogybank because it can only be seen if you have a subscription. I just don't want to violate copyright laws in the process.

Thank you

Gerrie

Answer 1

Here's a link to check out:

http://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog/2012/03/19/copyright-the-newspaper-article/

 

The article is great. Here's what it says about articles published in the US before 1923:

• Articles published before 1923. This is the easy case. Any news article published in the United States before 1923 is in the public domain and you can reprint or republish it in any form you’d like without any copyright concerns at all.

Comments

Thank you, Doug,

This is exactly what I was looking for!

Gerrie

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You probably know this anyway, but it doesn't hurt to repeat it.

Make sure you tell us where it came from: name of article, byline (if there is one), paper name, date published. I usually mention they were clipped from GeneologyBank or Newspapers.com also.  There is a box in which to put this information when you upload the photo.

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Here's another link to the same website. You may not be violating copyright but you may have a contractual problem with terms of use.

You may want to study the GenealogyBank terms of use before posting the image.

http://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog/2012/08/23/terms-of-use-genealogybank/

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Thanks, Anne for the reminder.

Jackie, I'm glad you found that post, I browsed the GenealogyBank terms of use earlier and somehow my old eyes were categorizing the copying and reproducing part with the copyright section they have above.

To eliminate any complications, I don't think I'll put the clipping on the profile unless I can find it somewhere in the public domain.

Gerrie

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Thanks Jackie, That was an eye opener.

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Yes, there are two different things to worry about:

1. Copyright
2. Usage agreements / terms of use

The original article may not be under copyright, but a (usually commercial) web site may have terms of use that disallow the use of an image that it is publishing.

Or the commercial site might have copyright of its IMAGE of the original. I.e., they may not own the original, but they own the photo/image of the original.

 

 

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That made me check the British Newspaper Archive  which charges for access and is a partnership between The British Library , a national organisation and Find my past, a commercial organisation.

It says very helpfully thay they are delighted for you to share your discoveries in anyway you choose as long as it's for personal use  That includes facebook, twitter and other social media websites.

The only caveat they mention is for commercial use but say that even then a commercial licence will not always be necessary

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And let's not forget that while Wikitree does not charge a subscription fee, it is, nonetheless a commercial entity.