The Internet Archive Sued Over Stored Pages

Kailash Nadh writes "The Internet archive, which has been storing snapshots of millions of webpages since 1996 has been sued by the firm Harding Earley Follmer & Frailey, Philadelphia. The firm was defending Health Advocate, a company in suburban Philadelphia that helps patients resolve health care and insurance disputes, against a trademark action brought by a similarly named competitor. In preparing the case, representatives of Earley Follmer used the Wayback Machine to turn up old Web pages - some dating to 1999 - originally posted by the plaintiff, Healthcare Advocates of Philadelphia. Last week Healthcare Advocates sued both the Harding Earley firm and the Internet Archive, saying the access to its old Web pages, stored in the Internet Archive's database, was unauthorized and illegal." CT:update note that the submittor got it backwards: Healthcare Advocates is the sueing Wayback and Harding Earley Follmer & Frailey, not the other way around.

Comments

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[donnyspi]

Better sue everyone who has visited the website in question but never purged their temporary internet files folder.

Didn't anyone ever tell you?

[legaleagll]

Didn't anyone ever tell you, law firms don't sue people, people sue people.

RTFA Addendum

[poena.dare]

The suit contends, however, that representatives of Harding Earley should not have been able to view the old Healthcare Advocates Web pages - even though they now reside on the archive's servers - because the company, shortly after filing its suit against Health Advocate, had placed a text file on its own servers designed to tell the Wayback Machine to block public access to the historical versions of the site.

So the robots.txt was added YEARS AFTER the site had been archived. I don't think they correctly used the "no-archive-time-travel" directive.

Re:If there is hope, it lies with the proles?

[KevlarTheSleepinator]

Hello, I am the legal representative of the estate of George Orwell. Posting of his work from memory on this forum is in direct violation of the copyright on the book 1984 and as such we are prepared to take every legal action possible to ensure that your infringement does not go unpunished. Expect a court order in your mailbox by the end of the week.

Re:obvious man question

[Xformer]

Ok, alright... first authorized sale.

Sue this

[fluor2]

I demand that Slashdot will remove this comment after 3 days! Or else I'll see you in court!

Re:Analogies

[Jonny_eh]

I agree!

Using an analogy in an argument or explanation is like sneezing in the other person's face! Only slightly different in obvious ways. You get my point...

In Other News

[Compulsion]

The IP law firm Dewey, Cheatem, & Howe is suing Akashic Inc. for 1.436e17000 violations of US and International Copyright Law.

Akashic Inc is accused of "rampant distribution of every single piece of copyrighted material concievable throughout the history and future of humankind."

Timothy Leary from Akashic Inc. commented that "I have no doubt that we will emerge triumhant in no less than 99.9% of all possible universes in which the case is currently active."

Good! Sue them offline

[arrowman]

The Internet Archive is the worst copyright infringement in the history of mankind. It's about time someone stops them. (Don't you dare mod me as troll, flamebait or funny! I'm dead serious.)

Re:We have this one every time...

[mattOzan]

However, the TFA also does mention that honoring the robots.txt is strictly voluntary and does not constitute a contract.

Shouldn't that be "...the f***ing TFA article also does mention..."

Re:Short translation of the article

[Fishstick]

Your Honor, I OBJECT!!!

On what grounds?

...that it's DEVASTATING to my CASE!!!