Dick Eastman has just reported the following about Kindred Konnections:

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"Kindred Konnections has had an online Web site for some time now.
They have been best known for their database of relationships,
much of which was created >from GEDCOM files submitted to them.
Their database presently contains more than 24 million names and
is available on a subscription basis. The folks at Kindred
Konnections haven't been idle, however. At GENTECH99 they
introduced several new services.

Kindred Konnections says that they are now indexing all the
genealogy-related Web pages on the Internet. The server at Kindred
Konnections looks for other Web pages that contain GEDCOM files,
text files in certain formats, plus several other file formats. Their Web=20
pages report that 2,652,450 names >from other pedigree-linked Internet
sites have been indexed, and that number is growing daily.

With the new software on Kindred Konnections' server, you can
upload a GEDCOM file, which will automatically be compared to the
24 million names in the internal database as well as compared
against several million more names on other Internet sites. You
will then be notified of all the possible matches."
---------------

Their indexing of genealogy-related web pages having GEDCOM=20
or other types of genealogy data files on them means that they=20
are using a spider to extract these family trees >from the web=20
sites of family genealogists without asking permission, and they=20
are then entering these data into their large data base without=20
the knowledge of the genealogists who did the original research=20
to develop the trees.

I personally consider this activity to be a form of piracy. I also=20
believe that all genealogists who are considering publishing their
trees on the web in the form of GEDCOM, text files (e.g.,=20
descendant lists), or other similar formats should think seriously
about whether they would want KK to extract their data without
their knowledge.

It behooves all of us to consider other ways of publishing our
family trees so that this type of activity will fail. As an example,
I suspect that the new data base of the Family Tree of the Jewish
People project is safe >from this type of piracy, except in the case=20
of a determined person who will develop a special approach for=20
that purpose, but I would like to hear >from some one connected
with the planning of the FTJP project as to whether our data are
safe there.

Regards,

Jerry

--
Prof. G. L. Esterson, Ra'anana, Israel=A0=A0=A0 E-mail: jerry@vms.huji.ac.il
Researching:
AIZIKOWITZ, MARCUS, MICHELOVICH, MIRVIS Baisogala/Datnuva Lithuania
ESTERSON, NORINSKY Berdichev,Ukraine
KRETZMER, SWEETGALL Zhaimel/Birzai,Lithuania
HELL, WAGENHEIM Riga/Bauske, Latvia
Visit the ESRA web site:<http://www.esra.org.il/>