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Wayback Archives as a Law Tool

Posted by Zonk on from the time-travel-is-fun dept.

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."

4 of 198 comments (clear)

  1. It also got wayback sued. by Peyna · · Score: 4, Interesting

    http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=112124551185 5

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    What?
  2. Hey Mr. Peabody! by DigitalReverend · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Stand back Sherman as we set the dials on the wayback machine to 1845....

    Seriously, theres been many times I would want to kiss the person running wayback. I lost my home a few years back and had several websites that I lost because I hosted out of my house. I have been able to rebuild, or come fairly close to duplicating those original sites.

    As for lawyers, if there wasn't somebody already archiving all these sights, they'd get someone to do it for them and then it would not be accessible to the public. I guess we need to take the good with the bad on this.

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    I read Slashdot for the headlines, because the headlines, unlike the articles, are usually original and never duplicated
  3. Re:Not everything is archived .... by pilgrim23 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Another point of note: Net Nanny and Surf Watch or other such tools blcok the main sites. they do NOT block the WBM archive of goatse.cx or the like. AND THAT IS A GOOD THING!!!

    Example:

    www.copstalk.com used to be the home page for a maker of Macintosh to PC via Appletalk cross platform communications tools. They were later bought out. If you wish to look at documentation on their older products, go to the WBM. www.copstalk.com these days IS A PORN SITE.

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    - Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
  4. Re:And this is a big deal why? by TTK+Ciar · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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?

    I work at The Archive. There are only two people, three at most, with the expertise and access to pull something like this off, and if someone tried Brad would almost definitely notice. There are checks in place to detect bitrot in the web archive, and altering older ARCs to include new information would be detected as bitrot and flagged for closer attention. They would then be compared against the copies in our sister organization's data cluster in Europe, and possibly also compared against the copies in the datacenter in Egypt.

    To make it work, you'd pretty much have to get Brad to play along, and he is fanatical about the integrity of the web data. I don't think you could pay him enough to do it, and he doesn't have any sons or daughters you could kidnap for blackmail.

    How one would go about demonstrating all of this in court, though, I do not know. IANAL.

    -- TTK