Are you a FamilySearch Family Tree Victim?

Victim mentality is a reasonably common mental condition in the United States. According to the WebMD.com article entitled, "6 Signs of ‘Victim’ Mentality." I seem to come back to this issue frequently as I work with people who are disturbed over the "changes" to the FamilySearch.org Family Tree. The WebMD article list six "signs." You might recognize some of these as common reactions to changes made to the Family Tree. Here are the six:

1. You feel powerless, unable to solve a problem or cope effectively with it.
2. You tend to see your problems as catastrophes.
3. You tend to think others are purposefully trying to hurt you.
4. You believe you alone are targeted for mistreatment.
5. You hold tightly to thoughts and feelings related to being a victim.  You also refuse to consider other perspectives for how to think about and for how to cope with your problems.
6. As a victim, you feel compelled to keep painful memories alive, not forgive, and take revenge.

Unfortunately, I have seen every one of these attitudes, tendencies or mind-sets exhibited by those who are upset with the Family Tree. Basically, most of us have not been conditioned to endure the unpredictable. Superficially, genealogy is a highly stable and predictable pursuit. But that appearance is an illusion gendered by the solitary nature of genealogical research. The negative reaction to a program such as the FamilySearch.org Family Tree comes from its unpredictability. Those who become upset do not see how an open collaborative program can produce ultimate stability.

I was motivated to reopen this issue by reason of an experience with a genealogist who was extremely upset because in a class I advocated the position that you do not own your genealogical data no matter how much time and effort you have put into your research. Ultimately, the problem is an issue of control. Some genealogists, and especially the one I talked to, claim ownership of their research and the idea that someone, especially someone uneducated, could copy and even modify their work and records is viewed as a personal affront and even a threat.

This issue is complicated by copyright laws and the actually very narrow concept of "work product." In the United States, copyright law is essentially a quagmire of statutes and rulings in court cases. When there are disagreements about what is and what is not subject to copyright claims unless the conflict can be resolved by settlement negotiations, the only recourse is to the Federal Court system.

Although the term "work product" is used by many people to support a claim of ownership to their historical and genealogical research, generally the law in the United States only recognizes "work product" as only protecting materials prepared in anticipation of litigation from discovery by opposing counsel. If you were to make a table or a chair (all physical, personal property in the US is encompassed by the term "chattel) by your own hands, the law would recognize your claim to the chattel's ownership in the way we can own all kinds of personal property. But historical records and documents are not chattel and in a general sense, no one can "own" the information contained in such documents and records.

The fact that you spent countless hours in a library or archive researching information about your family history does not convey any right of ownership to the information you obtained. This does not mean that you cannot write about the information and claim copyright protection to your book or article or whatever but it does mean that if someone comes along an uses the information you have found for their own purposes, you have no basis for claiming ownership and maintaining a cause of action as long as they do not copy those portions of your work that are copyright protected. 

As you can probably guess, unless the parties come to an agreement, this is why copyright claims end up in the US Federal Court System. 

Now, absent copyright claims, the fact that a cooperative, collaborative, and open venue such as the Family Tree exists seems to be the main issue with those who feel victimized. As for me, I can swim in the stream without a need to own the water.