Using Ethics in your Genealogy

We have all been taught from a young age the difference between right and wrong. I think most of us can agree that we want to live a good and moral life. We know stealing is wrong. We know intentionally hurting others is wrong and when we do, we should make it right. But what about those gray areas? The place between “it’s not wrong and it won’t hurt anyone”, but it will affect them. The internet has brought light to many of those gray areas. In fact, when you look a little deeper, you can see that those gray areas aren’t gray areas at all. In the following scenarios, what would you do?

What if you found a well-written family history about your family on the Internet that was sourced really well, but you wanted to include a large part of it in a compiled genealogy you were writing? What would you do?

This is a very common scenario. We come across other peoples’ family histories that connect with ours all the time on FamilySearch and Ancestry, right? The key difference in that scenario is that you want to use a part of it in something YOU are writing. Just because something is published on the Internet, doesn’t mean that it is free for the world to use, even if it about our own family. Plagiarism applies to using any form of work that you did not produce yourself. Everyone wants their work to be appreciated. The researchers that documented those family histories worked long and hard to gather that original information and should be given credit. You would never want your hard work stolen. It is only ethical to contact the researchers and publishers of the family histories to ask permission if you can include their work in your compiled genealogy. They will appreciate your respect in asking them.

How about this scenario? You met a new family member through your Ancestry DNA results and after talking to them a while, they requested a copy of your genealogical database, which you happily gave to them. Later, you learn that the database you gave to them was submitted to a commercial website and it was published on the Internet. Your database included personal information about living people. What will you do now?

That is an unfortunate event, but happens nonetheless. If you can, immediately contact your new family member and explain that information about living people was included when they submitted it to the commercial website. Most everyone today understands the importance of privacy and will likely be very apologetic for the mistake. Next, contact the commercial website and explain the situation to them as well. It has been my experience that companies are very quick to respond to such scenarios. The next course of action to take may be hard to do but necessary. It will be important to notify the people that were affected by it to let them know what happened, but leave your new family members name out of the conversation if you can. Identity theft is at an all-time high these days and they will need to take extra measures to protect themselves. It is a hard lesson to learn that way, but before you give anyone your genealogical database, make sure that they only receive a file with deceased members in it. It’s better to take the few minutes before hand then the hours, days, weeks, even months that it would take to correct the mistake.

I think it is safe to say that a majority of people in the world today don’t want to do anything to intentionally hurt someone else. If they do, they generally have the moral compass to want to correct the situation. The endless information available on the Internet has blurred some of those lines and made it hard to see the gray areas. If you are ever in doubt about if what you are doing is wrong or unethical, think about what if it happened to you? How would you feel? Your answer will tell you the right thing to do.