The
semargl.me Y-DNA database and website is currently down in response to
this screed against it by DNAeXplained. For those who don't know, DNAeXplained is in partnership with FTDNA to offer personalized DNA reports (at a rather steep cost), while semargl.me is an amateur database that mines Y-DNA data from publicly available sources and lists and maps it in helpful ways. The gist of DNAeXplained's complaint against semargl.me is that data mining is unethical, it causes websites to become overloaded, and may violate copyright. Also, rape and genocide. (The screed is a bit over the top.)
So, I'm curious what people here think. Is data mining publicly available genetic data ethical? Should semargl.me stay up or shut down?
I think this says it all as far as I'm concerned..." this screen scraping/data harvesting of Family Tree DNA project data is an ethics violation in the strongest terms and if this activity had been undertaken by someone within the US or within reach of the US via
copyright treaty, it would be prosecutable under copyright laws." Also, if proved, the actions of some of these administrators might appear, at first glance, to be against the guidelines of FTDNA, and if the company wants to maintain its integrity, then it might have to consider disciplinary action. They need some lawyers over there.
I would never recommend testing with Family Tree DNA to any of my relatives or acquaintances for precisely these reasons. I don't even know if 23andme is safe. I was sent a copy of a screen shot where some people were boasting on a public website that they were trawling through that data as well, or at least did for a while.
It amazes me that people don't know, for example, that detailed mtDNA results reveal a great deal of health related data which for any number of reasons someone might not want made public. Personally, I don't understand why someone would test and self-publish detailed results for this marker under a real surname.
Y DNA might be less problematical, but I always believe in being cautious about these things.
(I do realize that my attitudes are partly influenced by the fact that I have limited interest in genealogy. Had some older relatives not done my family trees, they would have gone undone. I'm even less interested in uniparental markers in terms of my individual genealogy. While I would like to know my father's markers for curiosity's sake, the only dna that I'm interested in, in terms of my own "identity", are the autosomal results anyway.)
And who are these people anyway, who are pawing about in other people's dna results?
Let me be clear...I make
no accusations about any of the people involved with this organization or any of the FTDNA administrators, and am not impugning their characters or motives. No doubt they are totally legit, disinterested genetics researchers.
However, what they can do, others can do. The Holocaust was only about seventy years ago. What would Hitler and his crew have given for dna results that showed that "X" person is full or half or one quarter Ashkenazi, or bears typical Ashkenazi uniparental markers, or gypsy markers, or African ones, or whatever group is disfavored. Those kinds of people still exist, and some of them are active in Russia today, and not just in Russia.
As you can tell, I don't 'do' trust, certainly not in the public domain, and I've found it stands me in good stead. I'm also a big believer in property rights, and that includes my own body.