COPYRIGHT - LINK BUT DON'T COPY

Copyright laws are designed to protect the rights of authors, musicians, artists, etc. against the loss of their work, rights and profits. Upon conviction, the penalties in time and money can be severe. If you are interested in specific details, see http://www.whatiscopyright.org/ or go to Google. For our purposes in history and genealogy, it is usually enough to recognize that facts and other public data cannot be copyrighted. For example, General Robert E. Lee was born on 19 January 1807. His ancestors and descendants are a matter of record. Nobody can copyright any of that data. However, the way in which an author chooses to display that information, by text, by grid or chart, or whatever, is the author's creative contribution and that can be copyrighted. So, when you find something you like and would like to share it with others, then the best way is to link to it. That way you are not taking possession of it, you are not claiming it as your own work (even by implication), you are not depriving the author of his creative right. What's more, it's perfectly legal, you have a clear conscience, it's as fast as if you had it on your own site, and of course, you save yourself a lot of work copying it. HOW TO..... Put this sentence on your page where you want the link to be: (a href="URL")Name(/a)* Then substitute the URL and the Name. Don't make any other changes (except omit the *). The URL is in the thin window at the top of your screen on the page you want to link to. The URL, or Universal Resource Locator, enables your computer to find things again. The Name is whatever you want to call it. It doesn't have any effect on the author's work. * But instead of the 4 parentheses ( ), use angle brackets < > on your page. It's just that if I used angle brackets here, the computer would try to link to a file called 'Name'. It's really quite easy. As you see, I did it at the top of this page and again at "Home" below.