Genealogy Blog 

NOTE FROM THE TRANSLATOR:

The following is a tentative translation of a French text. However, not being a specialist of legal terms, it may possible that certain English meanings are not quite identical to the original French text. Please excuse us for this.

Preamble: Further to your mails, we also asked our lawyer if the French legislation on data of less than 100 years of age and on ownership of databases was also applicable to GeneaNet foreign users.
Here is his answer: 

GeneaNet foreign users, by subscribing to your website, come de facto under the French law.  
It is the contractual approach of rules relative to dispute rights that may apply the General Conditions of Use of GeneaNet, even if one of the users is a foreigner.  

In italics, excerpts of our lawyer’s response.

Can I put data on people still alive in my family tree?

The January 6, 1978 law states that personal data are information relative to an identified physical person or one who can be identified, directly or indirectly.

There is no ambiguity in this response: a mere surname, with no date and no place, as long as it may identify a person, is part of this category! Therefore, if a Jean Martin alone with no link cannot be identified, a Jean Martin husband of Anne Breton, with children Joseph, Pascale and Georges, whose parents are Auguste and Antoinette Lefevre, this Jean Martin, is perfectly identifiable, even though neither date nor location is mentioned.

Conclusion: Yes and no: on the internet, whether you mention contemporaries with or without dates and locations, it is strictly the same thing. You ought to know that before publishing information on living persons.

Can GeneaNet be held responsible for personal information put on its website by its members?
1/ regarding « personal data » :
(…) regarding genealogical data shared on GeneaNet by its users, GeneaNet is regarded as a housing entity. (…) Effectively, a housing space is at the disposal of members of the website www.geneanet.org allowing them to store data from their family trees. Moreover, general conditions of the website are clearly oriented towards housing services.
Therefore there is a very restricted responsibility of the website.
Conclusion: no. Everyone who puts a family tree on line is held responsible directly for the data he shows, and cannot go against GeneaNet to escape his obligations.
2/ regarding the peculiar genealogical data:
General Conditions of Use of GENEANET.ORG state that data integrated in the website by its users are so integrated under their sole responsibility. Accepting them, the latter commit themselves to do nothing whatsoever against the legitimate interests of third parties whoever they are. Therefore, users must respect the law applicable to administrative documents related to genealogical data.

These dispositions are in total conformity with the legal qualification of GeneaNet, that is of a housing entity.

In actual fact, housing entities are recommended to minimize their active role in checking the housed contents. As a matter of fact, (…), GeneaNet will intervene only in the case where these housed contents appear to be “clearly unlawful ».

Consequently, the possibility for your company “to simply cancel the account of a member”, per article 6.1of the General Conditions of Use should be used with parsimony.

Conclusion: no, we cannot cancel a full online family tree or an account just because we are asked to do so.

---

What are your rights if some personal information is in a GeneaNet family tree?
1/ right to ask and to change (contact the owner of the family tree, ask him to modify data):
The French law-maker has foreseen expressively the possibility for anyone, justifying its identity, the right to ask the responsible person of a treatment of a personal nature (…).

The law does not state any particular methods for this right to ask. This right being personal and direct, one who wishes to use it, will just have to justify its identity by producing a signed ID  (or a copy thereof in case this is requested in writing).

Consequently, all requests, and especially those requesting a change (which may be data erasure) made by any person (notably beneficiary) other than the individual whose personal data are visible on the website GENEANET.ORG, will be purely and simply rejected by GeneaNet.

If the applicant is the person whose data appear on the website, the right to ask or to access is not subject to a legitimate ground, he will have the right to ask without justification. In this case, the applicant must contact the GeneaNet member who has put the information on his family tree.
2/ opposition right (ask for data erasure):
a) generally speaking :
(…) Any physical person has the right to make opposition, for legitimate purposes, that personal data have such a treatment.
Acknowledgement of these legitimate reasons remain, case by case, under the final appreciation of courts of justice, who generally refer to the dispositions of Civil Code relative to private life.
b) relative to genealogy:
Legal dispositions in this matter are of common law i.e. article 9 of Civil Code, Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
(…) It behoves that jurisprudence examples are very few.
For persons deceased, the Criminal Chamber of the Court of Appeal in a relatively recent decision judged that (…) : « Justify its decision a Court of Appeal  who retains notably that at the time of the publication in question the individual was deceased and therefore could not be personally affected by the revealed  information, that his heirs do not have the right to act in his name, that the litigious article indicates only that the individual was married and father of two children, and that there is no information regarding the wife and the children ».
As far as filiations are concerned, it looks like principle of secret should be used.
It behoves that no decision from a French jurisdiction has ever intervened in that field. This being said, the risk of dispute is very small. Finally, as for divulgation of the occupation of a person, this seems possible, occupation not being part of private life.

Conclusion: if a person asks the owner of a family tree, the latter must immediately erase the data without asking why, however, he can ask for proof of identity of the plaintiff.

If that person does not answer, GeneaNet can only act by reminding the owner of the family tree, and indeed in the absence of an answer, stop access to his account or hide his family tree. Erasure of data can only happen upon justice order.

---

May I request a copy right on my family tree?

Data can be protected by a copy right only if they are original works of mind, leading to right of literary and artistic ownership.
Practically, «it is not this information as such that is considered since it can not be suitable, but its selection and its presence in an organized whole. Simple data, once put together, can lead to a new organized whole with relationships ; it is that organization, resulting from an intellectual work, which constitutes an original contribution »
To our knowledge, no justice decision has ever confirmed or invalidated protection by copy right of a genealogical database. It seems that a comparison can be made with jurisprudence relative to organization charts. «Court of Appeal has stated that inasmuch as  an information compilation is not protected by the March 11, 1957 law on intellectual and artistic ownership, it must be emphasized how the text or the graphical form adds a contribution in order to really take advantage of  protection by the copy right.
At first, a family tree would not benefit from a protection by copy right, inasmuch as the architecture of family trees housed on GeneaNet is standard.
In practice, it belongs to the author to establish the reality of the investment, whether in obtaining or constituting, verifying or presenting the contents of the database. Magistrates will take into consideration the amounts of expenses, the time spent…

It is important to make it clear that when a database is made available to the public by the owner of the rights, the latter can not forbid :
-    extraction or re-use, by the person having legal access, of a portion not substantial of the database, in terms of quality or quantity ;
-    extraction for private use of substantial quantity or quantity part of a non-electronic database, except that copy rights or similar rights on works or elements incorporated in the database,  are respected

These various elements will therefore have to be asked to the author of any database who would claim to be victim of an illicit act by a member of the website GENEANET.ORG. in order to verify that legal protection conditions are fulfilled.

Conclusion : at first, no : the fact  that someone makes a copy of a family tree which you have put on line yourself, and integrates it to his own, for example, can not be reprehensible, and this, so much you have not added any particular presentation work. This is why, if you wish to show part only, GeneaNet can hide the individuals you want.