My personal genealogy has been put on the back burner for a while.  I am the coordinator for quite a few USGenWeb County sites.  There are some issues now with Rootsweb, who has been hosting many, if not most, of the USGenWeb sites for a long while.  The issues are:

1.  Years ago, the original owners of Rootsweb had claimed to going through the non-profit set-up for Rootsweb.

“We’ve been working with two firms of attorneys since late last year to obtain status for RootsWeb as a non-profit corporation…”

2. That non-profit status never happened, and many of us can’t remember ever receiving an explanation as to why.
3. Rootsweb was later (about early 2000) bought by Ancestry, a for-profit company.

4. Many are in agreement that a for-profit company, such as ancestry/The Generations Network, etc. can’t be good for a non-profit group like the USGenWeb Project.

5. Rootsweb had originally offered free webspace for all USGenWeb Counties. While this seems like a nice gesture, many in the project feel that since Rootsweb is now a part of a large organization, with investors who aren’t even interested in genealogy, it is no longer a generous, no-strings-attached offer as it may have once been.

6. One reason they feel the way I described in #5 is because there have been quite a few claim that information from their personal USGenWeb County site was harvested and placed behind a pay-site.

7. The AUP, in many peoples opinions, takes complete control of everything you upload to the *free space* they give you. Rootsweb has claimed that the following section was necessary in order for them to be able to back up our pages in case of an emergency. I, for one, have had my other sites hosted on other servers and I don’t believe any of them included this section:

By submitting Submitted Content to RootsWeb.com, you grant MyFamily.com, Inc., the corporate host of the Service, a limited license to the Submitted Content to use, host, and distribute that Submitted Content and allow hosting and distribution on co-branded Services of that Submitted Content.

Here are some links:

• Untangled Family Roots
• Genea-Musings: My Family, Inc Terms and Conditions
• The Unofficial History of the USGenWeb

I think that everyone should take a good look at their web host. If their terms of service include anything stating that they can take your website (or data, or submissions, etc.) and give it to another of their companies to “copy and redistribute” you should seriously consider your options.

Please take the time to research this issue if it concerns you. This isn’t the entire story, and, like all others, there are other sides to it.