The copyright issue that I’ve encountered for my project (on early nineteenth century Philadelphia) is that many of the documents that I would like to include are restricted in use by the online databases that they are on even though the content is in the public domain.  Since that’s what I’ve been working on, the readings often came back to this issue for me.  In light of how expensive these databases are and the restrictions they place on the use of ‘their’ files, is it fair or right for these institutions or companies that create these databases to exert so much control over documents that are now meant to belong to the public?  Or do these institutions/companies deserve the control and profit that they claim for the manpower they put into scanning the documents and for saving me the time and trouble of leaving my room in order to read them?