Ancestry fixes TOS error
Quietly and without fanfare, in its rollout of new and updated terms of service, Ancestry killed the professional researcher.
It didn’t mean to.
It was a mistake.
So… quietly and without fanfare … in an update of even newer and more updated terms of service, Ancestry brought the professional researcher back to life.
The problem arose back when, in December, Ancestry updated its terms and conditions.1
You remember what those are, right? They’re the limits somebody who owns something you want to see or copy or use puts on whether or not he’ll let you see or copy or use it. These are limits that are different from copyright protection, since the law says what is and isn’t copyrighted and you can own a thing without owning the copyright. So this isn’t copyright law; it’s contract law — you and whoever owns the thing you want to see or copy or use reach a deal.
You might wonder, if these are rules, how the whole thing can be considered a contract. Nobody gave us a choice about the rules when we subscribed to Ancestry.com, did they?
Actually, they did. Exactly the same kind of choice we have in a lot of things in life: take it or leave it. When we created our account with Ancestry, just as when we create an account with many services we use around the web, commercial and non-commercial, there comes a point in the join-up or subscription process where there’s a button or a check box or something. It always says something like by clicking on this link or checking that box, we’ve agreed to be bound by what the terms of use are.2
So it’s important that we review these terms every time we sign up for a website and again every time they change.
Because sometimes when they change, the change is most decidedly not a good one.
That’s what an eagle-eyed reader spotted back in December when Ancestry posted its updated terms. Jill Morelli, a professional genealogist from Washington state, noted that her recollection was that the terms of use had allowed “limited commercial use, i.e. we could use images, and info from their site for client work” — but that language wasn’t in the changed terms.3
She was right: the language before the change had allowed professional use by saying “You may access the Websites only personally with an individual browser and use the Content only for personal or professional family history research, and download Content only as search results relevant to that research or where expressly permitted by Ancestry.”4
The changed language only provided, “You may use and download the Ancestry Content only as necessary for your personal use of the Services.”5
Never fear, professionals.
It wasn’t intentional.
It was simply an oversight.
And the fix is in.
Access those terms and conditions now and the corrected language is there: “You may use the Ancestry Content only as necessary for your personal use of the Services or your professional family history research, and download the Ancestry Content only as search results relevant to that research or where expressly permitted by Ancestry.”6
Whew…
SOURCES
- See Judy G. Russell, “Ancestry updates terms of services
,” The Legal Genealogist, posted 15 Dec 2017 (https://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog : accessed 31 Jan 2018). ↩ - Ibid., “Reprise: a terms of use primer,” posted 29 Apr 2015. ↩
- See Jill Morelli, comment to “Ancestry updates terms of services
,” posted 15 Dec 2017. ↩ - Terms & Conditions, Ancestry.com, updated 17 Mar 2015 (https://www.ancestry.com/ : accessed 14 Dec 2017, via Wayback Machine). ↩
- Terms & Conditions, Ancestry.com, updated 14 Dec 2017 (https://www.ancestry.com/ : accessed 14 Dec 2017.) ↩
- Terms & Conditions, Ancestry.com (https://www.ancestry.com/ : accessed 31 Jan 2018) (emphasis added). ↩
I wonder if GenealogyBank will ever follow and allow professional genealogists similar terms? I have zero law training but my read of their terms is that a professional genealogist couldn’t share info found there with a client.
I wouldn’t count on GenealogyBank ever improving its TOS for genealogists at all, much less professionals. See GenealogyBank permissions clarified/
Whew is right, Judy. Thanks for following up with the right people on this issue.
Thank you for spotting it and calling it out!!
Speaking of RIGHTS… I believe that the LDS Church has “some ties” to Ancestry.com; hence, I am curious as to just how much “legal liberty” Family Search (LDS-owned) is able to actually procure from Ancestry.com for its own indexing of individuals — especially if a church member accessed Ancestry.com through their FREE membership affiliation/connection??? Since pretty much ANYTHING is possible these days, what guarantee is there that this “cross-pollination” is not possible AND/OR happening???
You are incorrect as to Ancestry ownership. Ancestry.com became a publicly traded company in 2009; its biggest stakeholder today is the private European equity firm Permira.
Judy – it seems to me that you are the perfect person to clue Ancestry in about the way they persistently ruin perfectly good websites. I am livid about the changes being made in findagrave – the pages are too busy (typical problem with Ancestry) and it’s getting harder to use. I really miss the simple construct of the former site – and found it much easier to navigate. We have complained repeatedly over the years – requesting them to use the KISS formula – even spoke to one of the site designers at an NGS conference – all to no avail.
I’m afraid they’re not listening to anybody about that site.
They also seem to be unconcerned with people creating memorial pages that do not contain any burial information at all. I’m not talking here about cases,where the family of a person who was lost at sea or whose body was never recovered from a natural or industrial disaster of some kind had a memorial stone installed in the family plot with the name and death information of the lost relative they were unable to have buried with the rest of the family (which Find-A-Grave has always allowed to be posted under the special category called a “cenotaph”), but about a “burial” with absolutely no information about the disposition of any body.
I recently came across one for a named lady, giving dates of birth and death in the 1600s, with “burial unknown” where the name of the cemetery is supposed to be entered. This memorial includes links to other pages memorializing her spouse and parents. The problem is that there is no record of that set of parents ever having had a child with this lady’s name, and no record of the birth name or parentage of the lady who was actually the wife of the purported spouse, other than on dozens of on-line family trees which do not cite any sources to support the purported relationships.
Find-A-Grave appears to be unconcerned about this violation of the site’s policies, but my feeling is that if this is allowed to continue, it will eventually make the site useless, because it will be impossible to rely on anything posted there.
Although perhaps I needn’t worry since the new search engine they are creating for the new site seems to be incapable of finding the correct record anyway.