All headstones photographed and submitted by me have been posted to Find A Grave, Ancestry, and Arizona Gravestones. These photos are intended to preserve the headstone in digital image for genealogical research. As a volunteer, I did not request permission to photograph from the cemetery or family who purchased the headstones. My intent is to provide a photographic record to the community not about numbers and ownership. Legal genealogist, Judy G. Russell, on the topic of copyrights of photos. "Copyright protection for a photo in the United States today begins the minute an image is captured and lasts for 70 years after the death of the photographer."

As a researcher, I am in awe of the dedicated volunteers who drive hundreds of miles, invest their time in walking cemeteries in all kinds of weather, and then invest their time in processing thousands of photos for upload to find a grave. This is a monumental contribution and unrecognized by those limiting themselves to appropriating "their" family. Volunteers generously photograph both family and strangers in order to preserve all of our history. The updates and links are again provided by volunteers who see value in contributing our time to add to the record of all memorials. I am grateful to each and every volunteer who has allowed me the use of their credited photo in Ancestry.

To usurp a volunteer's contribution based on "family" connections fails to recognize the generosity of time and labor that went before the creation of the memorial. Prior to Ancestry's ownership of the site, it was difficult and cumbersome to update the memorials. For volunteers adding thousands of memorials, this added considerable time to maintaining and updating the memorials. Transferring made sense then so that a member could process the updates for the sake of the record. This is no longer the case.

Ancestry has made several updates that allow anyone be it creator, contributor, or family to add, correct and link families together. The "ownership" of memorials is now an archaic practice that may benefit the ego of some individuals who insist on creating duplicate memorials for ownership sake. Not even Jim Tipton, founder of the site, produced such exhaustive bios that are now appearing.

These are the same individuals putting in countless photo requests without contributing in return. Do you own a census record simply because your family is listed or is it a vehicle that benefits generations to come? Of the hundreds of descendants, who is the most entitled to "own" the memorial. For those self-important people who have contributed few memorials but are "maintaining" hundreds, shame on you. Ancestry offers "virtual cemeteries" for those whose primary goal is "ownership" of the public records.

I retain memorials that I am actively researching for my Ancestry tree and linking to their family. My main contribution is to update based on continuing research and link the families from a vast database of 55,000 linked individuals. Most "family" members never bother to do this, they wait for someone else to do so and then demand the transfers. This is clearly evidenced in the lack of updates to the transferred memorials.

All headstones photographed and submitted by me have been posted to Find A Grave, Ancestry, and Arizona Gravestones. These photos are intended to preserve the headstone in digital image for genealogical research. As a volunteer, I did not request permission to photograph from the cemetery or family who purchased the headstones. My intent is to provide a photographic record to the community not about numbers and ownership. Legal genealogist, Judy G. Russell, on the topic of copyrights of photos. "Copyright protection for a photo in the United States today begins the minute an image is captured and lasts for 70 years after the death of the photographer."

As a researcher, I am in awe of the dedicated volunteers who drive hundreds of miles, invest their time in walking cemeteries in all kinds of weather, and then invest their time in processing thousands of photos for upload to find a grave. This is a monumental contribution and unrecognized by those limiting themselves to appropriating "their" family. Volunteers generously photograph both family and strangers in order to preserve all of our history. The updates and links are again provided by volunteers who see value in contributing our time to add to the record of all memorials. I am grateful to each and every volunteer who has allowed me the use of their credited photo in Ancestry.

To usurp a volunteer's contribution based on "family" connections fails to recognize the generosity of time and labor that went before the creation of the memorial. Prior to Ancestry's ownership of the site, it was difficult and cumbersome to update the memorials. For volunteers adding thousands of memorials, this added considerable time to maintaining and updating the memorials. Transferring made sense then so that a member could process the updates for the sake of the record. This is no longer the case.

Ancestry has made several updates that allow anyone be it creator, contributor, or family to add, correct and link families together. The "ownership" of memorials is now an archaic practice that may benefit the ego of some individuals who insist on creating duplicate memorials for ownership sake. Not even Jim Tipton, founder of the site, produced such exhaustive bios that are now appearing.

These are the same individuals putting in countless photo requests without contributing in return. Do you own a census record simply because your family is listed or is it a vehicle that benefits generations to come? Of the hundreds of descendants, who is the most entitled to "own" the memorial. For those self-important people who have contributed few memorials but are "maintaining" hundreds, shame on you. Ancestry offers "virtual cemeteries" for those whose primary goal is "ownership" of the public records.

I retain memorials that I am actively researching for my Ancestry tree and linking to their family. My main contribution is to update based on continuing research and link the families from a vast database of 55,000 linked individuals. Most "family" members never bother to do this, they wait for someone else to do so and then demand the transfers. This is clearly evidenced in the lack of updates to the transferred memorials.