Genealogy Forum UK

People are continually mixing up the copyright on data with the copyright on a visual representation of that data, such as a certificate!

Here is updated advice on certificate copyright.

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documents/information-management/copying-bmd-certificates.pdf

It basically says you can use them where and when you want as long as you adhere to the Data Protection Act 1998.

The Data Protection Act 1998 means you can use reproduce the certificates and the data contained for personal use but you do not own the copywright.

This prevents you from selling the certificates or data for profit.

Uploading a certificate onto a website as part of your genealogical research is not breaching that copyright.

Obtaining the certificate for free, such as downloading it from another persons tree on Ancestry, is not breaching that copyright.

If Ancestry charged you money for downloading certificates from other trees, that would breach the copyright.

I downloaded the Gedcom from Genes Reunited but when I tried to open it I was told to download a new programme to enable me to read it. When I tried to download that programme a warning came up on my computer so I didn't go any further. Any Suggestions?

Minishant1

If you have a genealogy program on your PC then open it and import the gedcom.

You could also associate gedcom files with that progam but that usually doesn't work.

Cheers, Mark, I'll try that.

You can read a lot of a gedcom file using Notepad, Microsoft Office Excel or Word and many other apps that you probably already have. If you navigate to the file, right click on it and choose 'Open With' you can then browse your apps to use one of those to open the gedcom. You may lose some of the info if the app doesn't support the particular characters used (this can happen with the simpler apps like Notepad) and you can go in and read, edit, delete, whatever but I don't think you can save as a gedcom file from these apps. They may supply plug ins that will do the job.

Thanks SRD I'll try that first.

Make a backup of the original gedcom first, we don't want any accidental disasters.

OK and thanks again.