What is obituary piracy?
Obituary piracy is the wholesale copying of funeral homes' obituaries — text and photographs — onto third-party websites that monetize them with display ads, flower-delivery commissions, "virtual candles", and premium listings. The copying is automated: scrapers watch funeral home websites and republish new obituaries within hours, often before the family has finished sharing the original link.
Why it works
The republished page frequently outranks the funeral home's original in search, because aggregator sites have more pages, more links, and better search plumbing than a local funeral home's website. Relatives searching a name land on the copy, see the ads, buy the flowers there — and the funeral home's own ancillary revenue and family relationships quietly leak away. Worse, copies are sometimes altered: wrong dates, edited text, and donation links the family never approved.
It has a price tag in court
This is not a gray area. In Thomson v. Afterlife Network Inc., 2019 FC 545, Canada's Federal Court certified a class action over mass obituary republication and awarded CAD $20,000,000 in damages plus injunctive relief (CBC coverage). Service Corporation International — the largest funeral services provider in North America — has litigated against Echovita on the same pattern. Obituary text and photographs are copyrighted works; republishing them wholesale without permission is infringement.
Why funeral homes rarely notice
Nobody at a funeral home vanity-searches every decedent every week. Families find the copies first, assume the funeral home posted them, and either complain or — worse — quietly conclude the home sold their loved one's notice to an ad farm. The reputational damage lands on the funeral home either way.
Common questions
Q: Is republishing an obituary ever legal?
A: Yes — with permission. Many funeral homes intentionally syndicate to partner platforms and newspapers they have agreements with. Piracy is specifically the unauthorized, wholesale copying by sites the home never approved.
Q: Does a copyright notice in my website footer stop it?
A: No. Scrapers ignore it. It helps establish your claim later, but detection and takedown are what actually remove copies.
Q: How do I find out where my obituaries are republished?
A: A free republication scan checks known republication domains and fresh suspicious domains for your recent obituaries and shows you what it finds.
See where your obituaries are republished right now. The free scan checks known republication domains in minutes — no account, private report. Continuous monitoring: Obituary Watch from $29/month.
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Obituary Watch provides monitoring assistance, not legal advice, and is not affiliated with any funeral home, streaming provider, or platform. Findings are similarity signals that require human confirmation — they are not accusations about any website or company.