Re: Re: Magazine article


"Ye Old One" <usenet@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:pi4sd21t4cipqcnb1o4c0hlfr003ve7gs9@xxxxxxxxxx
On 11 Aug 2006 21:22:01 -0500, "Q" <quondam1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
enriched this group when s/he wrote:


""Roy Stockdill"" <roy.stockdill@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:44DCEA0B.25907.1BB40D6@xxxxxxxxxxxx
From: "Q" <quondam1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

It's one thing to enter a living relative's name on a family tree
that
is local to your computer, but it's something different if you post
it
to a web page. That's why a number of online genealogy search
engines
allow submitters to either remove living people from the published
versions of their trees, or to omit their names, referring to them
only as "Living."

I'm sure it's not against the law -- not yet, anyway -- to publish
the
name of a living person in one's family tree, but it's a courtesy to
ask permission first.

Any accretion of data about an individual -- even if it's information
that's freely available through press clippings and similar sources
-- becomes a "dossier" and that is the thin edge of the wedge that
makes privacy advocates queasy.>

All of which is specious nonsense.



You cannot possibly argue that if
information on a living person is available in, let's say, 10 different
sources, all of which are entirely in the public domain, then it's OK
to
publish each piece of information individually, one at a time, but it's
not
OK to publish all 10 pieces of information together because putting
them
together constitutes a "dossier", even though every single, individual
piece of data is in the public domain in its own right (phew - what a
sentence!). That's a bit like saying you can publish individual moves
in a
chess game but you can't publish the entire game, or show part-
completed pieces of a jigsaw puzzle but not the finished work.

There are no consequences to the chess game whether you publish the
entire
game or individual moves. It's quite different when you talk about
human
people, however.

Care to give an example?

No.

Applied to the ultimate degree, this philosophy

Anything is ridiculous if "applied to the ultimate degree."

would make it utterly
impossible for any writer to publish a biography of any living person
in
that person's lifetime. If that's the kind of crass censorship you want
to
see, then, fine, argue it.

I don't think that it's "crass censorship" to refrain from publishing
material about people who prefer to live below the radar, or to be left
alone, in any case.

But it isn't THEIR choice to make. There is, thank heaven, no right to
privacy in this country.

The courts seem to think that such a right exists -- up to a point:
http://tinyurl.com/qmyjv


But, IIRC, you have already said that a person is "despicable" if he
chooses
to post pseudonymously, so perhaps you are not respectful of other
people's
privacy in general.

Privacy is an illusion.

Confidence that one will be left alone is not an illusion.



As an ex-books editor, as you know, I have
seen more biographies and autobiographies than probably anyone on
this list. I have read the bland, sanitised, lying "official" versions
and
I
have read the unofficial biographies that tell the truth. I know which
I
prefer.

I'm sure you prefer the ones that present the subject in the most
salaciously unflattering light as possible, whether they are accurate or
not.

I preferred it when you called yourself a "literary editor."

In any case, the courts have established different standards for people
who
are famous than for people who are not famous.

Have they?

Yes.

Whether it's fair or not, we
have a license to pry into the lives of famous people that we do not have
for our obscure relatives, neighbors and fellow usenet posters.

Care to cite that law you think exists?

There is no statute that I know of. The license is based on legal
precedent.

Also, some of the material in the unauthorized biographies is
speculative,
and quite a lot of it is outright baloney. That's because book
publishers
don't have the same fact-checking standards that newspapers do.

Hohohohoho! Pull the other one.

It's true. You could look it up. A researcher who uses newspaper cuttings
is less likely to be inaccurate than somebody who gets his information from
books -- especially the sort of books that get serialized in News of the
World.

Same with family histories. No-one can possibly argue that any data
that
is very clearly in the public domain should be suppressed. Otherwise,
it
simply makes a hypocritical fiasco of the whole thing.

What exactly do you mean when you write "in the public domain?"

That it is information that either cannot be copyrighted or has been
deliberately placed by the author into the public domain.

Copyright only applies to so-called intellectual property.

It has nothing to do with vital records. There is not copyright for health
records, for example, yet these are generally treated with a fairly high
standard of confidentiality.

Not by Murdoch papers, however, which often have admitting office employess
at major hospitals on their payrolls not to mention access to the telephone
records of private individuals..

In this country, and possibly also in the UK, it is possible for somebody
to
go to your local courthouse and research your criminal record -- and the
criminal records of your children --

No, neither possible in the UK.

Lucky you.

But why do you suppose it is not possible in the UKI?

your house and how much you paid for
it, and whether it is mortgaged.

Yes, but you have to pay for the information.

You have to pay for it if you want access to it from the computer on your
desk, but if you are willing to travel to the place where the information is
stored, you can sometimes get it for free, or for the cost of copying it.

If you have ever been bankrupt -- for
whatever reason --

Only to a certain point. Though for six years you can get a list of
county court judgements.

that can be added to the "unofficial biography" that some
busybody might want to use as a weapon by putting it online for people to
gawk at .

Yes. And the problem with this is?

The problem is that the information can be used to harm the individual it
concerns -- among other problems.

They may phone your employer to find out what position you hold
in your company.

There are also seemingly harmless facts that one might wish to conceal
for
employment purposes. In the United States, it is illegal to discriminate
against a prospective employee because of his age (even though for
insurance
purposes, it is financially advantageous to do so). Employers are not
supposed to ask the ages of job applicants, but they don't need to ask
because much of that information has been placed online by people who
think
as you do.

Good. Of course, most of the information is on commercial databases
anyway.

IMO, it shouldn't be, and I'd be willing to bet that in a few years it won't
be.

The result is that employers are able to keep their benefits
costs down by making youth the principal yardstick that determines who
will
be hired.

Rubbish. They hire the best person for the job - or the one with the
biggest tits.

All things being equal -- tits and talent -- they hire the younger person
because it costs them less to do so.


We all know HM Queen Lizzie's family tree back to Charlemagne or
whoever. Are you suggesting this accumulated knowledge, which has
been in the public domain for many centuries, should be suppressed
because she's still living? And if one you get into that area, how is
anyone else's family tree any different?

One's private business is just that: private. There is stuff that is
known,
and even more stuff that can be found out, but it's obvious from the
material in the links I included in my previous post that a substantial
number of people don't like their personal details to be posted in a
public
place where they may be the subject of the prurient interest -- and
entertainment -- of strangers.

There have been a couple threads on this controversy in alt.genealogy, so
it
can hardly be considered unusual or even eccentric for somebody to
object
to being included in somebody else's published family tree.

It may not be unusual for someone to object (at first) but you just
have to educate them - and if you can't educate them then ignore them.

I believe that you could be sued -- in this country, at least -- for
publishing personal information about private (not famous, that is)
individuals without permission.

IMO, the ancestry of a living person is fairly benign -- as information
collecting goes --but it can be used to access census information, and
information from obituaries that can open the door to pretty embarrassing
stuff, as you probably know if you did any reporting while you were at
oTW.

So?

Most people do not wish to be embarrassed, or annoyed or intruded upon.
And in general, people who lead godly, righteous and sober lives deserve to
be free from this sort of worry. Clearly, there are people who think this
sort of salacious interest in other people's affiars is okay. That's what
keeps NoTW and the Sun in business, isn't it? So tell us, what is your
opinion of getting information via wiretaps? What about an employee who
makes photocopies of her employer's personal notes and then sells them to a
paper? What about people who publish photographs taken surreptitiously
through somebody's bathroom window ? Where do you think the line ought to
be drawn, with respect to personal information remaining confidential? -- Q

-- Q





Roy Stockdill
Guild of One-Name Studies: www.one-name.org
Newbies' Guide to Genealogy & Family History:
www.genuki.org.uk/gs/Newbie.html

"There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about,
and that is not being talked about."
OSCAR WILDE


Please learn to format you sig correctly, and how you snip from the
end of your posts.

--
Bob.


.