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Link Rot and the US Supreme Court
necro81 writes "Hyperlinks are not forever. Link rot occurs when a source you've linked to no longer exists — or worse, exists in a different state than when the link was originally made. Even permalinks aren't necessarily permanent if a domain goes silent or switches ownership. According to new research from Harvard Law, some 49% of hyperlinks in Supreme Court documents no longer point to the correct original content. A second study on link rot from Yale stresses that for the Court footnotes, citations, parenthetical asides, and historical context mean as much as the text of an opinion itself, which makes link rot a threat to future scholarship."
Good thing the NSA has it all backed up!
They should just start linking through the Wayback Machine.
Interesting concept, but Wayback is not always complete.
Perhaps the court should create an exemption to copyright, that allows the creation an internal copy (perhaps in image or pdf format) of the page for anti-link-rot protection.
I'm sure with clever wording they can manage to restrict this to lawyers and court proceedings, however:
I could make the case that it should apply universally.
After all, If you ever put up a page publicly on the net to content you were the rightful owner of, you have declared that version of that page to be a public document, and anyone should have the ability to make a static Image of that document. There are all sorts of copyright corner cases involved, but it is really no different than publishing your screed in the New York times or your local paper. There is no way to unpublish it, and no way to prevent it being archived.
F. Robert Jack
dupe
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/09/21/122210/implications-of-broken-links
I think that duty was passed to another part of the government.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
* Lawyer: "Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?"
* Witness: "No."
* Lawyer: "Did you check for blood pressure?"
* Witness: "No."
* Lawyer: "Did you check for breathing?"
* Witness: "No."
* Lawyer: "So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy?"
* Witness: "No."
* Lawyer: "How can you be so sure, Doctor?"
* Witness: "Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar."
* Lawyer: "But could the patient have still been alive nevertheless?"
* Witness: "Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law somewhere."
Take the health care act. The court had to first rule that the congress meant the law to become something they specifically stated that it was not. A tax. Then make it legal that way. They stretched to make it "Constitutional". This is not something that has just happened lately either. The US Supreme court has been doing this type of thing for many, many decades. Once they did the stamp act for Machine Guns they made their statement then. "When we think something is right we will tear away at the constitution to implement it." Agree or disagree with the law itself the US Supreme Court is and has been filled with people who have taken an oath they have non intention of following.
If it makes you feel better you can write me off as a non thinker who gets his marching orders from Limbaugh, Hannity or Fox News. The truth though is I believe in the greatness of the country as founded. The libs want guns gone. The Pubs want to "protect my right to hunt and protect myself from other people."
The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.
Thomas Jefferson
That is why you need an AR-15. They are already making information illegal. with information people can make guns and explosives and generally scary things. So they will "protect" us by vetting what information we can and can not have access to. "Just to protect the children and to save us from terrorists." Government is not your mother or your father. Government is not your uncle. Government is a needed service that can (if allowed to become to powerful) be your worst enemy.
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
Again Thomas Jefferson.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?