I’m also no lawyer, but hopefully the law would recognize a difference between archiving a copy—essentially an on-line library—vs. taking over operation of the old site, or mining an existing collection to create a new work.  (We had an example of the latter a few years ago, where several of us had to demand that our own arms—and artwork!—be removed from an on-line collection that had collected them from other sites without our permission.)

Of course (I would think, but whadda I know?) there would/should be a difference if the old site somehow charged admission for viewers—in which case we would be robbing the proprietor of income based on his intellectual property.  Seems like that came up a few years back re: on-line access to copyrighted music…  (just musing here, since Michael didn’t charge admission.)

I agree that if there was a charge to see the arms, and I then copied them all and made them available for free, then it would be ripping the original host off.  But then we still come down to the fact that I would need permission from each armiger to display their arms in a new armorial, seeing as that is part of their property.

I’m not a lawyer, as I said, but as someone who has produced quite a lot of free content on the web, it pisses the hell out of me when someone lifts it and uses it without my permission. The creator of a work does not have to suffer financial harm for theft of intellectual property to be wrong.

Joseph McMillan;87463 wrote:

I’m not a lawyer, as I said, but as someone who has produced quite a lot of free content on the web, it pisses the hell out of me when someone lifts it and uses it without my permission. The creator of a work does not have to suffer financial harm for theft of intellectual property to be wrong.

I just have to weigh in here. Before starting up any new registry site using the USHR’s database, you have to look into the legal consequences of using their data without permission - even if it is published and available for free. You do not necessarily have to have a specifically viewable copyright notice for the information to be legally copyrighted.

If someone were serious about taking over the USHR website, I would start with sending a certified letter to Michael Swanson at his registered domain name’s contact address stating your intentions and asking for a dialog with him. If it does turn out that he has really given up on the USHR website / business, he may be willing to either just give you everything or sell you everything as is.

If you don’t hear back from him then I would say that you’re in a much better legal standing if you started up your own online registry business from scratch.

If funding is an issue, you could try seeing if there is a University or some other already established entity - like the Smithsonian (which has a congressional mandate to preserve American history) that would be interested in joining in or underwriting it.

Joseph,

I still cannot understand what all the fuss is about, the individual who runds the USHR will either resurface or not.  Meanwhile our member may use one of the other private registration services or as somebody pointed out (maybe you) our members can publish their arms by simpley posting them on our members armorial.  What is the big deal here?!  One thing I do not find appropriate is for the USHR armorial to be used (without permission) as the basis of someone else’s new registry.

My last two bits on this worn-out topic.

Regards,

I don’t think anybody is suggesting using USHR as a basis for a new registry, mainly a directory as to some of these arms.

It seems to me, that what is asked for is not really a register, but rather a database.

The Swedish Heraldry Society has one, where we endeavour to collect all known arms in Sweden, ancient and new.

What is registered in the database is mainly the (or rather, a) blazon, which is searchable. If an image is available, this is also shown with the search results.

The database can be accessed at http://databas.heraldik.se/.

Luis Cid;87465 wrote:

Joseph,

I still cannot understand what all the fuss is about, the individual who runds the USHR will either resurface or not. Meanwhile our member may use one of the other private registration services or as somebody pointed out (maybe you) our members can publish their arms by simpley posting them on our members armorial. What is the big deal here?! One thing I do not find appropriate is for the USHR armorial to be used (without permission) as the basis of someone else’s new registry.

 

My last two bits on this worn-out topic.

 

Regards,

I don’t understand the fuss, either.  You’re saying what I’m saying.

Without rereading all the posts on this topic, I gather that part of the concern is the loss of information if this site closes down.

I have just checked and http://usheraldicregistry.com/ has been archived at www.archive.org 45 times since 2006 so the information is being preserved and is available at archive.org on their wayback machine.

If you are not familiar with this site go and have a look. They claim to have 150 billion webpages archived!:shock: If you have the original URL it is easy to find, if not a search should locate missing webpages. Most of the stuff that was on say geocities should be there for example. You can even nominate/suggest sites for archiving :cool:

Jeff,  Thanks for the very useful information / resource. I will bookmark this.