Archive.org Sued By Colorado Woman

An anonymous reader writes "The Internet Archive is being sued by a Colorado woman for spidering her site. Suzanne Shell posted a notice on her site saying she wasn't allowing it to be crawled. When it was, she sued for civil theft, breach of contract, and violations of the Racketeering Influence and Corrupt Organizations act and the Colorado Organized Crime Control Act. A court ruling last month granted the Internet Archive's motion to dismiss the charges, except for the breach of contract claim. If Shell prevails on that count, sites like Google will have to get online publishers to 'opt in' before they can be crawled, radically changing the nature of Web search."

Comments

Re:Posted notice?

[IndigoParadox]

Qnzzvg! >_<

I hope she doesn't sue me now...

[__aailrp9629]

Because just by viewing her site, my web browser saved a cached copy!

Re:Posted notice?

[Anonymous Coward]

Parent is not off-topic. The moderator just didn't get it.

Re:Court dismissed most charges

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Internet Archive took the site down per their opt-out policy when she requested it.

Perhaps, but they had no right to copy it in the first place. They do not have any legal authority to go around instigating "opt out" policies, and the fact that they removed the content when asked or that the complainant may otherwise be an unwholesome character do not change this.

People shouldn't put things online that might come back to bite them.

No, they shouldn't. But millions and millions of people do, and one can reasonably argue that the law should protect huge numbers of people making mistakes that are only human and can have potentially horrible consequences at the expense of supporting a small number of businesses (or public organisations) providing "services" with unproven benefits.