Off topic: chat

response on placename in the 'deciphering' thread:

KildareFan wrote: »

Portach in Irish means a bog - so sometimes the port in a place name refers to a bog.

Agreed on portach/portaigh but it is not relevant to Port Ryan or most if not all other Portxxxx placenames. There are two meanings of ‘port’ – a landing-place / bank / harbour / haven / port; or a fortress/military station / chieftain’s residence. The landing place meaning is referenced in the Leabhair na h’Uidhre. Later, in the Four Masters in a reference the death of King Malachy (in 1022 A.D.), Port used synonymously with ‘dún’.

Joyce (PW) maintains that the ‘port-‘ names on a river/lake are landing places, elsewhere they are residences. He also says ‘Port-‘ forms the beginning of about 140 townlands, parishes and villages in Ireland. A few in the CastleConnell area – Portcrusha (landing place of the cross) where a bridge was erected by an O’Brien in 1506 (per Four Masters), Parteen (little landing place). Portland the townland above Lough Derg is from port an tullchán, the bank/landing-place of the little hill.

An Act of Henry VIII, reinforced by Charles II in 1665 required place names to be in English, not Irish, as they “are very troublesome in the use thereof, and much retards the Reformation of that Kingdom,”

KildareFan wrote: »

Feeling really disappointed at the guidelines issue by the RCBI for copying/transcribing Church of Ireland parish records and headstone inscriptions - in particular the restrictions on posting photos and headstone transcriptions. A tragedy for family history if these are more widely adopted.
https://www.irishgenealogynews.com/2018/04/rcbl-publishes-new-guidelines-for.html

It will be a problem for this group I'd say:
http://historicgraves.com/donate

pinkypinky wrote: »

Practically speaking though, I'm not sure how the RCBL will police this. Are they going to take legal action against every website that puts up grave records?

I’ve had another look at this since my post #175.. The document issued by the RCB is headed ‘GUIDELINES’ (in capitals) some of which are sensible, standard best practice, others just plain silly,
In my opinion it’s derrière covering, a box-ticking exercise probably provoked by the upcoming change in the data protection laws (due May 25). Any breach of data protection – if successfully prosecuted - could render the RCB, NAI, GRO or PRONI subject to penalties. However, it is hard to see for dead people what data / copyright could be breached and how any prosecution could be successful.

In the Republic, copyright for C of I registers of

• baptisms and burials before 1871, and
• marriages before 1845

is subject to the National Archives (Ireland) Act, 1986.
However,

• registers of baptisms and burials after 1871 and
• post-1845 registers of Church of Ireland marriages

are subject to the Civil Registration Act, 2004 . Copyright is held by The Representative Church Body and subject to internal regulations

The Church’s Constitution and Irish law requires that members of the public may access data. (C of I rules state access must be supervised and no photography is allowed.)

Members of the public may transcribe entries by hand but are not permitted to publish that information without permission from the copyright holder. Does the RCB really think this will be requested?

Guidelines state details for marriages, baptisms or burials newer than 100 years should not be posted on the internet or published in any other formats.

[Comment – nothing about policing all this is mentioned. Also, how can it be proved that a date of death record was obtained the C of I and not from the GRO or the NAI’s probate file? Not being allowed photograph a record in a register is a nuisance, worse for a page of a vestry meeting, but access remains available, so this is no big deal.]

Memorials/headstones/burial grounds
The Guidelines on this area are silly, I cannot see any justification for them.

The Guidelines speak about ‘worthy projects at local level’ and say the recording work by local groups is to be commended and encouraged adding there is a need to be mindful about copyright restrictions. This is putting their own clergy /vestrymen in a very difficult position.

They go on to state the memorial and its information belong to the descendants, adding that clergy and select vestries need to proceed with caution because they are responsible for the management of burial grounds. Any proposal to publish details relating to graves should be scrutinized and it’s strongly recommended that neither images nor details of inscriptions on memorials erected within the past forty years should be uploaded to the internet or published in any other formats.

Comment - Legally, publication is defined as making information known in a general sense. Placing information on a notice (gravestone) in a location open to the public is publication. Where could there be a cause for a legal action under data privacy laws? Even if the information is incorrect or even defamatory, the dead cannot be libelled or defamed. Why should the C of I be interested in this when it does not own the copyright? My (non-legal) view the RCB is digging a hole for itself by getting involved in the process.


I cannot see the guidelines discouraging most from uploading information. However, they will adversely affect that very worthy bunch, the local parish history group, who out of respect for their local ‘authority’ will be deterred from publishing graveyard lists/inscriptions.

L1011 wrote: »

The biggest debate about copyright on headstones is how the church can claim any ownership to it at all, seeing as they neither paid for nor wrote it.

I agree.
This is not the place to get into a debate on copyright but the basics are clear. It is sad that the RCB have taken their present stance, unlike that of both the GRO and the RC Church who have made their records available FOC, albeit with DP protection limits.

The purpose of copyright is to provide a balance between protecting creative works and allowing the public access to them. For copyright to apply, a work must be creative/original – i.e. its creator must use skill, labour, judgement and effort to create it. I’d accept that the RCB’s BMD registers (a substantial body of work/records) meet those criteria, reinforced by its economic rights and thus merit copyright protection. However, I also would argue that publication of a few disparate entries on a family website or parish publication do not constitute a meaningful breach of that copyright.

A tombstone inscription does not meet copyright criteria. You cannot for e.g. copyright a name. In any event, copyright lasts for the lifetime of the author plus seventy years, after which period it is in the public domain and no permissions are necessary to use it. Tombstones pre-1948 thus could not be copyright protected.

Should the RCB take issue with me for publication I would point them in the direction of the CLDS and free / fee-paying websites that provide both images and inscriptions and claim that the information is already in the public domain. They might, of course, prevent me from future access to their registers on the basis that I did not respect their rules. That certainly would be of concern to professional genealogists.