India big tree - Asistance sought

Rehan Allahwala Would you like to assist in this project?

Anilkumar Nair Puthalath I have tagged you here for your convenience.

I suggest the anonymous "Tree manager" stop using a pseudonym and presents him/herself with his/her true identity. This is a website where we are open about our real identities. Personally I would have problems assisting a person I have no idea who really is ...

Anne,

Most people do not have a issue but some do. I will PM you my real identity,

Thanks for understanding

While I doubt I can help much in this part of the tree/world, I will follow this discussion just in case I can, as I'm sure some other Curators will do.

One suggestion I have, to make things easier for YOU yourself, and for anyone else interested in this project, is to create a [Merge] Project page on Geni's Wiki. For example: http://wiki.geni.com/index.php/Biblical_Tree_Merge This puts the information in one place, easy to format for all. Geni's Wiki is actually pretty much not very active which makes it even more useful, in my eyes.

Great idea. Thanks for the suggestion. It is a good one.

Changed my name to reflect the true identity, as suggested by many here

I will do what I can do

I am extremely annoyed to see that your great project includes the copying and reworking of materials including, text, research and graphics from my website. In particular, the whole of the chapter on Gondal. This despite the clear copyright indications everywhere on the website.

Your behaviour is unacceptable.

As a matter of goodwill, I am prepared to give you fifteen days from today's date to remove all the materials you have copied from The Royal Ark website.

Yours faithfully,
Christopher Buyers
The Royal Ark

"I am extremely annoyed to see that your great project includes the copying and reworking of materials including, text, research and graphics from my website."

In regards to the graphics... most of the images Anchit used can be found in thousands of places on the 'net.

Unless you created them... you have no copyright over those images.

As far as text goes... a quick google search shows that Royal Ark takes their text from here which is an official page from government of India: http://coochbehar.nic.in/htmfiles/history_book5.html

Yet another place where you have NO legitimate claim.

"This despite the clear copyright indications everywhere on the website."

For the record... if you copied ANY text, without providing sources, from ANY book, website, or paper... this automatically voids any claim to copyright you may or may not have.

"Your behaviour is unacceptable."

Given the clear evidence available that shows your site uses the work of others... I call bullshit on your entire claim.

Also... for the record... tactics like that you displayed here are often taken as threatening in a court of law.

In this case... YOUR behaviour is unacceptable, and likely illegal.

Provide evidence to support your supposed claim to copyright... or get lost.

Jason P Herbert

Also... for the record... most of your pages on the "India" section of your website show copyright dates such as:
Copyright© Christopher Buyers, January 2001 - October 2008 - (http://www.royalark.net/India/India.htm )

Copyright© Christopher Buyers, January 2001 - September 2008 - (http://www.royalark.net/India/salute.htm )

Copyright© Christopher Buyers, January 2001 - September 2006 - (http://www.royalark.net/India/nonsalute.htm )

Copyright© Christopher Buyers, January 2001 - August 2008 - (http://www.royalark.net/India/pensions.htm )

Copyright© Christopher Buyers, January 2001 - March 2007 - (http://www.royalark.net/India/sources.htm )

Copyright© Christopher Buyers, January 2001 - February 2007 - (http://www.royalark.net/India/glossary.htm )

Which means all of your claimed copyrights on those pages have been *EXPIRED* (or lapsed) for, at least, the past 2 years (in one case, as much as 4 years).

I would highly recommend you consult a copyright attorney before you respond again.

Jason P Herbert

Young man, all I can suggest is that you familiarise yourself with the difference between a publication date and the expiry of copyright. The charge of plagiarism, of course, has no time limit whatsoever.

You make some pretence of claiming to have ‘read’ my website. In which case, I can only guess that you left your glasses in hiding, every time you came across the introductory page of each chapter. Every single one includes a list of sources, included there are primary documents and archival sources, thesis, published books, and interviewees or people who have supplied their own private information. But then it appears that you do not quite know the difference between using a source and copying?

I am not in the least bit interested in what you copy from other internet sources. If there are all those thousands out there, then why the need to copy all mine?

I look forward to hearing from you again after you have spent 20 or 30 years collecting material, researching original documents and archives, deciphering text and old handwriting, translating foreign languages into English, converting dates from various extinct calendar systems into Gregorian, comparing, contrasting, correcting and verifying material, interviewing people and making sense of it all. But somehow I sense that such a day may never come with the likes of you.

Mr. Buyers of Royal Ark (via James Hoard)

Firstly, I would like you to believe that none of us here are wanting to disrespect you or demean the work you have done in aggregating the information. You have done a great job and I cannot even begin to imagine the effort it would have taken you. Kudos to that.

The thing that has surprised some of us who follow the Genealogy world is the demand for copyright on "factual third party information" that has been put up on the "internet" through a "public website". We just have not come across such a thing in the past and are just grasping what you asked for.

In my personal opinion, if at all anybody can be called owner of this information, it would be the descendent's of these families themselves. And too is a tough case to make for most of the well known public figures whose lives are the subject of public discussion. Some of those descendent's are already on Geni and thus are owners of there history. A stretch case I could make is that I am somewhat the owner of this information since I am a descendant of Lord Brahma, through Maharja Agrasen (son of Raja Ballabh) of the suryavanshi line and therefore all the current descendent's of Lord Brahma (part of the tree) are my cousins. But that is stretching it too much and I do not wish to do that. Just putting it out there though.

A few things that I would like you to believe:

1. At the beginning of every dynasty you have a page that "summarizes' the dynasty's origin and what they achieved during there rule. That is your language and analysis and you can claim copyright on it. I have NOT taken a single word from that into the tree

2. For every major ruler, you have a short commentary on his achievements, medals, honors etc etc. i have NOT taken it thus far for any of the work on the tree. I did that for only one profile day before and I linked the source to your website.

3. So the data I have taken from your website is names, dates, pictures and relationships of these people. ALL FACTS. Facts weather online or not CANNOT be copyrighted, even if one puts a copyright message on it. The following links make that clear even for online Genealogy. Kindly look through them.

http://www.pddoc.com/copyright/genealogy_copyright_fundamentals.htm

http://genealogy.about.com/gi/o.htm?zi=1/XJ&zTi=1&sdn=genea...

http://books.google.com/books?id=jthoNqd8It4C&pg=SA5-PA97&l...

The idea of the above points is to give you a clear picture of how I have used only FACTS from your website. I have not copied your expression, structure, opinions, analysis, commentary or thesis. Needless to say, I have used other online sources, books and direct contacts with some descendent's. Where required, I have collaborated and edited the information to the best of my knowledge.

I am truly a great fan of the work you have done and by no means intent to take away the credit for the same from you. Wherever, if at all, I take any information/analysis from your website I link the source to our website. The single minded aim of putting this on Geni is to make this a great Indian Genealogy site with ACTIVE members (I do not make money from it and it is a substantial time commitment). Once the information is in there, people will come in and add there own bit. As you can imagine, millions of Indians are directly or indirectly related to these dynasties, including myself. At some level, I would believe you had the same objective when you decided to put up your research on the internet

My humble request to you again is not to nix the project. Your information is very useful and I will make sure it is credited everywhere it is used. It will only lead to more traffic of interested folks to your website. And as has happened in the past, no ANALYSIS/ THESIS of yours has been put up here and will not be, unless you explicitly give such a permission.

I hope you see through this.

Anchit

Mr. Buyers

Here are a few examples of how the sources are being applied when the "profile" is complete.

(example where the information was through multiple sources including Royal Ark)

Maharaja Bhagvatsingh

An example where Royal ark was the major source of facts

Maharaja Lokendra Singh

An example where the information was sourced through online channels but not from royal ark

Bhawani Singh

The ONLY example where text was taken from Royal ark

Maharaja Sardar Singh

An example where the material was sourced from a book shared by a member of the royal family (scanned copy of book page mentioned as source)

Rao Chanda

There are a number of profiles I have created based on books written in the late 18th century and early 19th century, copies of which cannot be printed online.

I hope this gives you a fair flavor of the profiles, facts used and sources credited.

Also, here is how the tree will become ACTIVE

Kunwar Pushpendra Singh Karjali, Professor

This is an example of a member of the royal family of Jodhpur who has joined Geni and therefore inherited all the history of his ancestors already put into Geni..

Firstly, as to your statement “I would like you to believe that none of us here are wanting to disrespect you or demean the work you have done in aggregating the information”. I disagree. That was precisely what Mr Herbert intended, foul language and all.

It is all very well picking up bits and pieces of interpretation of copyright law from places like Wikipedia, but imagining that is sufficient guidance upon which to assume oneself an expert on copyright law is a mistake. What copyright do you have in mind, operating in which country?

You started your claim in your original e-mail to me that you were using other sources. The only one you were able to name was Tod. Well, Tod published his book on the Rajput dynasties in 1829-1832, from material collected a lot earlier. In his genealogies, he certainly gave rulers but not their families, wives or connections. So, one must presume that anything that you have on these on your site, and anything that comes after 1832, certainly does not come from him.

As to your claim that you are simply reproducing facts, your claim may well be true. But to be true, your site would need to be in the original language and we will be seeing Hindi, Urdu, Gujarati, Persian, Turkic and a number of other languages. Alas, we do not. Instead, what we see is my interpretations, transliterations, name order and spellings.

What we also see reproduced is my analyses, opinions, and thesis on birth order, legitimacy and rank. We see the same with my analyses and conclusions of disputed relationships, attributions and connections. We see my assumptions on dates and date conversions. Since in at least two instances I had to devise my own date conversion programmes to convert dates from the original calendar to Gregorian, the idea that you are simply reproducing facts is quite laughable.

Indeed, how would you even know the difference when you have never even set eyes on the original documents or interviewed the people I have used. When was the last time you visited the India Office Records of the British Library and looked at the primary documents? Have you, for example, gone through the pension allocations for the Mughals?

If you had come to me, stated your reasons and requested my permission I may well have given it to you. But your behaviour here and that of your friend, and now your somewhat lame justifications have put paid to any such possibility now. Please comply with my original request and remove all material taken from my website.

Jason, Royal, etc.

You shouldn't really worry about "James Hoard' aka Christopher Buyers of royalark. He just compiles information he gets elsewhere for his site. The information and pictures on his site are not his material, and rarely does he even have permission to use it on this site. He just comes across aggressively to intimidate you.

"Inatra Sithawathia" now that is an interesting name. Does not seem to appear in any list of legal experts in copyright law or plagiarism as far as I can find. In fact, does not seem to exist anywhere on the web before 15/8/2014. May we have a reason for this puzzling absence from the ranks of mankind? Does sound vaguely invented Cambodian or Laotian, so could you perchance be the cheeky chappy who came by to assert claims over a photograph on our website? When asked to provide full name of copyright holder you were unable to do so? And when asked if you were not the photographer yourself, who was, date taken and by when you were given permission, could not provide that either??

This is reference for the royal ark of "Loharu" Khawaja Zia Jan Beg had three sons Mirza Qasim Jan Beg, Mirza Alam Jan Beg and Mirza Arif Jan Beg. Details of Mirza Qasim Jan and Mirza Arif Jan are there but Mirza Alam Jan is missing. For your information i have his complete details and i want you to add them up to complete the genealogy.