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They are preserving
our paper histories, DIGITALLY, one page at a time!
May 22, 2008
I Have a Complaint
Concerning Many Genealogists.
Warning: This article contains personal
opinions.
I have a complaint that may upset some
people, including some who read
this newsletter. I will probably lose
readers because of this article,
but I don't care. Like many of my readers,
I feel so strongly about this
issue that I just have to speak out - hold
the sugar coating.
Some people are so shortsighted that they
manage to ignore certain facts
that are blatantly obvious to others.
In short, every time I post an article or
someone's press release about
some new genealogy data becoming available
on a fee-based web site, a
great hue and cry arises from the nay-sayers.
The comments they post on
this newsletter's web site and elsewhere
vary in wording but have a
common theme: "The information is public
and should remain free to all of
us and not be the private property of some
company."
I am amazed at the folks who actually
believe this bit of misinformation.
In fact, information that was free in the
past remains free today and
will always be free. In the United States,
this is dictated by Federal
law. That is true now, it has always been
true, and will always be true
unless Congress changes the laws. Until
then, the information will remain
free to all of us in the same manner that
it always has been.
By Federal law, public domain information
has always been available to
all of us free of charge. All we ever had
to do was to travel to the
location where the information is
available, be it in Washington, D.C. or
some other archive. The information is
free although we might have to pay
a modest fee for photocopying. If we don't
want to pay a photocopying
fee, we always have the option of
transcribing it by hand. That free
access is not changing by the simple act
of some web site placing the
information online. By Federal law, that
information will continue to be
available free of charge to anyone and
everyone who wishes to travel to
the location where the information
resides. There is absolutely no change
to this free access.
What *IS* changing is that we now have
more methods of obtaining that
information. While we can continue to
access it at no charge in the
old-fashioned way, we now have new avenues
- specifically, online.
Companies that seek out this free
information and then invest a few
hundred thousand dollars in scanners,
servers, data centers, high speed
(and expensive) connections to the
Internet backbones, programmers,
support personnel, and all the other
expenses are allowed to charge a fee
for that access. However, the
old-fashioned, in-person free access
remains exactly the same as before: free.
Let me draw an analogy: water is free. If
I want water, I can go to the
local river or lake with a bucket and get
all I want at no charge. But if
elect to use a more convenient method, the
local water company spends
money laying pipes under the street and
across my lawn to my house. I
then have to pay a fee for that higher
level of service. The same is true
here: the information remains free, but we
expect to pay a fee for the
expensive "pipes" that deliver that
information conveniently to our homes
at our convenience.
For me and for most other Americans, it is
cheaper to pay for online
access (Ancestry.com, Footnote.com,
WorldVitalRecords.com, etc.) than it
is to take a trip to Washington, D.C. like
I used to do. Using one of
these online services actually REDUCES my
expenses. I am very thankful
that commercial services make the
information available for a modest fee
so that I no longer have to pay exorbitant
travel expenses. (Have you
priced automobile gasoline or airline
tickets lately?)
I am appalled that some people apparently
expect a company to spend money
gathering free records, spend money
scanning it, spend money building
data centers, spend money buying servers
and disk farms, spend money on
high-speed Internet connectivity, spend
money for programmers, spend
money on customer support personnel, and
spend money on advertising to
let you know that the information is
available, and then expect that same
company to make the information available
free of charge!
Where did they learn economics? At the
Tooth Fairy University?
To quote William Safire, speechwriter to
one of my least favorite
vice-presidents, these people are
"nattering nabobs of negativity."
C'mon folks. It is time to grow up and
recognize the simple fact that
those who spend money making information
available to all of us are
allowed to recover their expenses plus a
reasonable profit. Those who
don't like this are free to get their
information the same way that we
have been obtaining it for decades. If
you don't care for the new
option, simply use the old method that has
been in place for decades. You
are free to choose whatever you want, but
please don't complain about
new, more convenient options that some of
us appreciate.
If any vendors decide to drop out of this
business because of the chronic
complainers, we all will lose.
Are you a "nattering nabob of negativity?"
- Dick Eastman
Posted by Dick Eastman on May 22, 2008
Reposted by John Cramer
Also, please include the following
statement with any articles you
re-distribute:
The following article is from Eastman's
Online Genealogy Newsletter
and is copyright 2007 by Richard W.
Eastman. It is re-published here with
the permission of the author. Information
about the newsletter is
available at http://www.eogn.com.
Anyone complying with the above does not
need to ask permission in
advance.
The rest of this and many other short
stories are available through the Tri County Preservation
Society.
TRI COUNTY
Preservation
Society
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Thanks Eileen 
