I have a multi-year site for a 100-year-old school & am laboriously compiling rosters for each & every class since 1911. Recent classes have over 500 names each = over 20,000 names so far. Since the Rosters of names are not password protected, how do I prevent the commercial websites like Classmates.com, Alumni Junction, Alumni Class & Alumni Archive, etc. from copying these names for their own websites? Can I copyright our lists somehow & can there be a place post a notice on the Class Rosters page?

These sites & emails are very misleading, trying to look like the "official" site for our school & charging alumni who think they are supporting us. I have disclaimers on our home page, but some alumni have been taken advantage of.

There is no place on the Profiles page for arbitrary admin-defined content, so posting a notice on the home page, or password protecting the profiles pages (which would require classmates wanting to join the site to either use the Missing Classmates page or contact a site administrator) are your only options.

By the way, if I remember correctly, you cannot copyright a mere listing of data (such as names), and anyone wanting to copy that content for commercial purposes would know that. Unfortunately, those services have successfully skated as close to the line of fraud as they can without actually crossing it that there is little recourse available.

Yeah, I think you're right about not being able to copyright the list as they are probably considered Public Record. And putting them on a Missing Classmates list just provides another list for those creeps to copy. I hate having to be so defensive about them, & don't want them to take advantage of the HOURS & HOURS I've put into developing the Rosters! GRRRRR!

Thanks, Eric!
Sharon