Wayback Archives as a Law Tool

Carl Bialik from the WSJ writes "The Wayback Machine's internet archive and Google's cached pages are becoming indispensable tools for some lawyers, especially specialists in intellectual-property law. Dell has used copies of expired websites to get the domain name DellComputersSuck.com transferred to it, the Wall Street Journal reports. EchoStar used Wayback in a case against a Polish TV company. Playboy checks Wayback to look for infringers of its trademark bunny or other images. And Wayback was even used to discredit a witness and reach a mistrial in a Canada murder case."

Comments

And this is a big deal why?

[Shadow of Eternity]

Peaple go to the library and dig through hundreds of old newspapers and records, whats the big deal with using wayback for websites?

Re:And this is a big deal why?

[ucahg]

For one its not quite as verifiable. Who is to say, for example, that someone with access to the Wayback servers couldn't put their own content and dates on there, and then use that as "evidence" for some suit?

I don't know how (if?) its regulated, any insights into this?

Not everything is archived ....

[awacs]

... WBM respects the site's decision to not allow archiving. Unfortunately, those sites who might be the most interesting know that, and know that they can block archiving.

Employers are using Google too

[October_30th]

Maybe this is a bit off-topic, but employers are also known to use Google and web archives to check up on the past of a potential employee. So be careful what kind of statements you make on the net using your real name.

I wonder...

[Bryansix]

I wonder if people will try to sue website owners for content that they already pulled off of thier website. I mean I would hope not but I could see how this could happen. A person realizes that certain content is copyrighted and then pulls it and later on some lawyer for the owner of this content sues and uses google cache or WBM as a tool to prove it posted copyrighted material.

Re:I wonder...

[Peyna]

Just because you stopped doing something, doesn't mean it wasn't illegal while you were doing it.

See, if I am beating the crap out of you, but stop before the police get there and witness it, that doesn't mean I wasn't beating the crap out of you and therefore guilty of battery.

It's a weird example, but it works.

If you've ever read some of the RIAA threat letters you'll notice they specifically state that just because you listen and pull down the offending material doesn't mean they're giving up their right to sue you for posting it in the first place.

But see, they signed a peice of paper

[Mr Guy]

In the article, it mentions one of the archive's technicians signing an affidavit saying they think it's a true archive. No one would ever lie about that for a big corporate payout.

Childish Grudges

[SilentShriek]

The childish nature of these corporations is ridiculous. Looking through archives of up to nine years just to point out: "Hey, you said we suck!" Who cares.

If Dell did not suck, they would not have to be so defensive.

I like hardware sites...

[Momoru]

From Apple.com circa 1996:

            New PowerBook Family
Addressing the needs of customers in small offices, home offices, business and education, Apple announced the Macintosh PowerBook 1400 series, combining 117MHz PowerPC speed with a removable CD-ROM drive and expansion options.

Ah 1996 was how long ago? I remember lusting after those 117Mhz.

Carbon Dating

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be extraordinarily difficult to forge old yellowed hardcopy of newspapers or microfiche copies that are duplicated across numerous library archives .

Thank goodness its equally difficult to forge a few html pages and file time stamps. No-one could ever do that.

Virtual reality indeed. I just shake my head and wonder.

Re:In Contrast to

[Macadamizer]

Lawyers dont have this long term morality thing that we do

Has nothing to do with morality -- being a lawyer is a job. A lawyer can argue one day about poor quality tools and the next day that those tools are high quality (as long as it is in a different case, that is!) because that's his or her job -- to zealously represent the interests of his or her client. Lawyers don't deal with "truth" in that way -- the truth is for the jury to determine -- so its not a moral issue of lying one day and telling the truth the next. Besides, maybe, based on the particular facts of the case, in the context of the facts the Sear's tools ARE poor quality in the context of one case and ARE high quality in the context of the other case.

Besides, other than the paycheck and their oath to zealously represent their clients, lawyers typically don't have "a dog in the fight" -- civil cases are typically not personal, so again, it's all just another job, and you do your best for your boss, whoever that might be on a particular day...

Re:Text (Yes) Images (not always)

[the_true_cirrus]

As far as I could tell from experimenting with an old site of mine WBM tends to have multiple copies of sites from different times. If an image, page or any other object is missing from one of those archived copies it will redirect to the next most recent copy of that file in the WBM and so on. If the latest archived copy still doesn't have the file THEN it redirects to the actual website.

I've often noticed that WBM pages load very slowly and I suspect that this is partly due to all the chained redirects your browser goes through before it finally reaches a copy of an image or a definitive 404 error if it is gone.

Re:There ought to be a Law

[mousse-man]

What I'd do is to force WBM to either become legally compliant (ie archive their data on WORM media) or not being admissible in court.

Problem solved since WBM can impossibly keep that much data on revision-proof media.