Uploading Ancestry images to other tree websites?

How do others interpret the Ancestry T&Cs with regard to their digital images of things like parish registers and wills? I’ve always understood these to be copyright, and that attaching them to public trees on other websites is therefore not allowed.

We are allowed to download and print a reasonable number of images for our own private use, but making such images freely available to anyone and everyone on other sites doesn’t seem to me acceptable.

Some suggested to me recently that being a paid subscriber at Ancestry allows people free use of their images wherever.

 

Thanks, Peter. That’s the bit I found and I had similar thoughts to you.

However, what constitutes a ‘small number’, and is adding them to a public tree on another website ‘in connection with your family history research’? I can see that the latter actually relates to ‘downloading’ images, rather than uploading them to a public website, but I can also see how some researchers might interpret this as saying it’s OK to publish Ancestry images on other sites, providing it’s in connection with your research, and does not involve whole datasets.

I am reluctant to contact the archives in question in case their longer term response is to remove their records from Ancestry.

 

To add to what I said earlier, and why I asked my question initially, is that the Ancestry T&Cs do not say explicitly, and in plain English, ‘you may not take images from this website and upload them to another’ (or words to that effect).

My interpretation is that uploading Ancestry images to public trees on other websites would be in breach of the Ancestry T&Cs, copyright and licensing considerations, but is my interpretation correct?

 

Do the Ancestry T&Cs cover images that did not originate from Ancestry datasets? For example, if someone has uploaded to their tree an image of a parish register entry which they have paid for directly from the Record Office concerned, but which is not available to view on Ancestry? Once uploaded to one Ancestry public tree these images tend to appear on many other trees. I'm sure the Record Offices would not be happy about this, but how can Ancestry prevent it happening?

 

I'm sure Ancestry could prevent people publishing copyright images on their site, but I have my suspicions this is something they won't bother about unless challenged by the copyright holder - which has sometimes happened, but not for individual images.

Maybe other sites are the same. If people upload Ancestry images to public trees on other websites, maybe nothing will happen unless Ancestry challenges it, and my guess is that they probably won't.

 

Trouble is, if no action is taken against individuals who breach Ancestry T&Cs and copyright restrictions, then you can sort of understand why some people think it’s OK to disregard them - always assuming they’ve actually read them, that is.

 

Likely because in most cases, their Ancestry account is terminated and any dispute resolution is forced into arbitration so we never hear about them. The US appeals court case in February was the first time I've ever heard ever heard anyone challenging the T&Cs and not being forced to go into arbitration (though that was about Ancestry DNA, not Ancestry.com). I believe y'all in the UK are forced into using Irish law if you want to file anything, so its probably cost-prohibitive for most regular people to dispute an account termination.

 

I have an amazing copy of a coroner's inquest into a fatal accident of an ancestor I dare not publish because I had to sign an agreement not to publish it, and that by default would include an online family tree. Even a private one.

 

Ugh, yes. Its almost a page long of "don'ts". And its from 1873, so I'm like...its well past any danger of being used in a lawsuit or something? It was a sad case, he was only married about ten years before the accident and his wife outlived him by 40 years and never remarried.