I. What Happened When a Well-Meaning Volunteer Got It Wrong
Before rules, a story. A dedicated genealogy volunteer — enthusiastic, well-intentioned — spent an entire weekend transcribing her family history. She copied detailed narratives from a popular commercial genealogy website, uploaded scanned pages from a living cousin's personal family book, and pasted in a biography she found on a local historical society's paid membership database. She then submitted all of it to a public network database under her username. Within two weeks, the network received a cease-and-desist letter from the commercial site's legal department. The historical society flagged the copied biography. And the living cousin — whose birth year, maiden name, and current city appeared in the uploaded document — filed a formal privacy complaint. None of this was malicious. Every bit of it was avoidable with fifteen minutes of orientation. That is why this module exists, and why it gates every other Skill Lab in the PS! Program. The Kentucky History and Genealogy Network, Inc. operates as a 501(c)(3) public charity. Its legal standing, its tax-exempt status, and its ability to serve the community all depend on volunteers understanding three things before they contribute a single record: what they may legally contribute, what private data must never enter public systems, and what this program actually is and is not under Kentucky and federal law.
II. Copyright Law & What You Can and Cannot Contribute
Copyright is automatic. The moment a person writes a sentence, takes a photograph, or compiles a database, that work is protected by United States copyright law — even without a registration, a watermark, or a notice. You do not need to see the symbol © for a work to be copyrighted. WHAT IS IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN (SAFE TO ABSTRACT): Raw historical facts are never copyrightable. No one owns a birth date, a death date, a county name, a military unit number, or the fact that a person lived at a particular address in 1890. These facts can be recorded, transcribed, and shared freely. The following categories of records are generally in the public domain and may be abstracted for contribution to the KHGN network: • U.S. Federal Census records (1790–1950 releases) • Kentucky death certificates issued more than 50 years ago • Published newspaper articles from publications whose copyright has expired • U.S. military service and pension records • Probate records, deed books, and court orders filed in Kentucky county courthouses • Kentucky land surveys and entry records from state archives • Photographs taken before 1928 (generally public domain in the U.S.) WHAT IS COPYRIGHTED (NEVER CONTRIBUTE): The following are actively protected and must never be copied, uploaded, or reproduced in KHGN systems: • Narrative biographies, family stories, or compiled trees from commercial genealogy websites (Ancestry, MyHeritage, FindMyPast, etc.). These sites hold proprietary rights to the compilation and the narrative presentation, even when the underlying facts are public. • Personal family books, privately published memoirs, or printed family reunion booklets. These are immediately copyrighted by their authors. • Photographs taken after 1927 unless you personally took the photo or have written permission from the photographer. • Transcriptions or abstracts copied verbatim from another genealogist's published work — even if they are available online for free. • Database exports or "tree matches" downloaded from subscription services. THE ABSTRACTION RULE: You may read a copyrighted source and write down the raw facts it contains in your own original words. That is called abstracting, and it is legal. You may not copy the sentences, the narrative structure, or the compiled presentation. Write the fact; do not reproduce the expression. Example: A commercial biography reads, "Elijah Combs, born in 1843 in Breathitt County, served with distinction in the 14th Kentucky Infantry and returned to manage his father's mill on Troublesome Creek." You may record: Elijah Combs, b. 1843 Breathitt Co. KY, 14th KY Infantry, miller. You may not paste the sentence. THE COMMERCIAL DATABASE TRAP: One of the most common mistakes new volunteers make is treating a "hint" or "match" on a subscription genealogy site as a verified, shareable primary source. These hints are algorithmically generated and often inaccurate. More importantly, the compiled family trees, the attached documents, and the narrative summaries on these platforms are proprietary. Copying them into a public network database exposes KHGN to legal liability. Always trace the hint back to the original government or archival record and contribute from there.
III. The Living Privacy Shield — Deceased Baseline Only
The Living Privacy Shield is KHGN's non-negotiable standard for all volunteer activity. It exists because genealogy naturally bridges the past and the present — and that bridge, if crossed carelessly, can expose living people to real harm. THE CORE PRINCIPLE: You are a historical preservation volunteer. Your work concerns the deceased. Any information about a living person — even a living person who is a relative of your research subject — must be handled with extreme caution and, in nearly all cases, kept entirely out of public-facing network systems. WHAT COUNTS AS PROTECTED DATA FOR LIVING INDIVIDUALS: The following categories of information about living people must never be entered into any public KHGN chronicle, transcription workspace, or network submission: • Full legal name combined with birth date and current location (the identity theft triad) • Current or recent home address or street address • Mother's maiden name (a common security verification question) • Social Security number or any government ID number • Phone number or email address • Financial details of any kind • Medical or health information • Details about minor children Even seemingly innocent details can combine into a profile that enables identity theft, stalking, or fraud. The aggregation problem is real: knowing someone's full name is harmless; knowing their full name, birth year, county, and mother's maiden name is a serious privacy risk. THE DECEASED BASELINE RULE: All public-facing research and contributions must be anchored to individuals who are confirmed deceased. A person is considered safely "deceased" for these purposes if: • A death record exists for them in an accessible archive, OR • They were born more than 110 years ago (the standard used by the U.S. Census Bureau), OR • A family member with knowledge of the death has provided that information in writing. MODERN OBITUARIES — A COMMON PRIVACY TRAP: Funeral homes and newspapers routinely publish obituaries on the open web — searchable, freely readable, and widely shared. New volunteers frequently assume that because an obituary is publicly posted, it is safe to contribute to the KHGN network database. This assumption is one of the most common and consequential privacy mistakes in genealogy. A modern obituary — meaning any obituary for a person who died within roughly the last 50 years — typically names living survivors: a spouse, adult children by name and city of residence, grandchildren, and sometimes siblings. When that obituary is contributed to a permanent, searchable genealogy database, those living individuals' identities, family relationships, and geographic locations are permanently indexed under an ancestry record. The distinction is critical: "publicly posted" and "safe to redistribute into a genealogy database" are two entirely different things. THE SAFE OBITUARY RULE FOR KHGN CONTRIBUTIONS: • Obituaries published before 1975 (approximately): generally safe to abstract facts about the deceased. • Obituaries published after 1975: apply the Living Privacy Shield — abstract facts about the deceased only; do not contribute the full names, cities, or family relationships of any listed living survivors.
IV. What KHGN Is and Is Not — Volunteer Framing & Legal Compliance
The PS! Program — Practice & Serve — is a gamified, peer-to-peer volunteer skills training space operated by the Kentucky History and Genealogy Network, Inc. (KHGN), a Kentucky nonprofit corporation recognized as tax-exempt under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. WHAT THIS PROGRAM IS: • An informal, unaccredited community learning experience designed to help local history enthusiasts develop basic research skills. • A volunteer orientation system intended to train contributors to locate, abstract, and submit public-domain historical records to the network's preservation database. • A free public benefit offered by KHGN to support its stated mission of Kentucky historical and genealogical preservation. • A gamified progression system (PS! Levels, XP, badges) that rewards engagement and recognizes volunteer milestones within the KHGN community. WHAT THIS PROGRAM IS NOT: • Not a college, university, community college, or vocational trade school. • Not a certification program. Completing any or all PS! Skill Labs does not confer the title of "Certified Genealogist," "Professional Researcher," or any other credentialed designation. • Not legal advice. Nothing taught in any Skill Lab constitutes legal guidance, title examination, or professional land surveying. • Not a substitute for professional genealogical research. THE VOCABULARY OF VOLUNTEER TRAINING (NOT ACADEMICS): We say "Skill Lab" — not "Course" or "Class" We say "Review Challenge" or "Skill Check" — not "Final Exam" or "Test" We say "Level Unlock" or "Advancing" — not "Graduation" We say "Qualified Volunteer Status" or "Level Badge" — not "Certified" or "Credentialed" We say "Community Guide" or "Mentor" — not "Professor" or "Instructor" We say "Training Module" — not "Curriculum" or "Syllabus" This vocabulary is not cosmetic. It is the legal and ethical framing that protects KHGN's 501(c)(3) mission, protects volunteers from misunderstanding what they are earning, and keeps the program within the boundaries that the IRS requires for an educational public charity. YOUR ACKNOWLEDGMENT: By completing this gate module and passing the Skill Check, you are confirming that you have read and understood these three foundational standards: 1. You will only contribute content you have the legal right to contribute, abstracting raw facts from public-domain sources and never copying copyrighted expression. 2. You will apply the Deceased Baseline to all public-facing work and never enter protected personal data about living individuals into any KHGN system. 3. You understand that the PS! Program is an unaccredited volunteer training experience and that no badge, level, or milestone confers an academic degree, professional certification, or vocational credential of any kind.
Sign in to earn XP when you pass the skill check.