8/1/2004
By Diane Haddad
What's new in discovering, preserving and celebrating your family history.
Searchable online database sites such as
Ancestry.com 
<
www.ancestry.com > and FamilySearch <
www.familysearch.org> have made genealogy one of the hottest topics on the Internet. But what if these sites actually owned the millions of facts they contain — facts about your ancestors?
That could happen, say critics of the Database and Collections of Information Misappropriation Act (HR 3261). The bill, sponsored by Rep. Howard Coble (NC), would make it a crime to redistribute a "quantitatively substantial" portion of the information contained in a database (except federal government databases) that was generated, compiled or maintained by another person.
The bill's supporters — including the Software and Information Industry Association and Reed Elsevier (publisher of the LexisNexis legal database) — say it would protect companies from cheaters who extract information from databases and sell it. If passed, the act would benefit consumers like you because companies could share more information without fear that their work will be stolen.