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Federal Judge Says Internet Archive's Wayback Machine A Perfectly Legitimate Source Of Evidence

Posted by msmash on from the reason-to-live-by dept.

Tim Cushing, reporting for TechDirt (condensed): Those of us who dwell on the internet already know the Internet Archive's "Wayback Machine" is a useful source of evidence. So, it's heartening to see a federal judge arrive at the same conclusion, as Stephen Bykowski of the Trademark and Copyright Law blog reports.From the report: The potential uses of the Wayback Machine in IP litigation are powerful and diverse. Historical versions of an opposing party's website could contain useful admissions or, in the case of patent disputes, invalidating prior art. Date-stamped websites can also contain proof of past infringing use of copyrighted or trademarked content.From TechDirt: The defendant tried to argue that the Internet Archive's pages weren't admissible because the Wayback Machine doesn't capture everything on the page or update every page from a website on the same date. The judge, after receiving testimony from an Internet Archive employee, disagreed. He found the site to a credible source of preserved evidence -- not just because it captures (for the most part) sites as they were on relevant dates but, more importantly, it does nothing to alter the purity of the preserved evidence.

11 of 54 comments (clear)

  1. Except that evidence can and has been destroyed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Just submit a DMCA request. Poof!

    1. Re:Except that evidence can and has been destroyed by sims+2 · · Score: 4, Informative

      even better park the domain with a robots.txt
      User-agent: *
      Disallow: /

      and archive.org will promptly nuke the site from its archive. :(

      --
      Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
    2. Re:Except that evidence can and has been destroyed by stoborrobots · · Score: 2

      I was under the impression thst it stops saving new pages, and stops *displaying* old pages, but does not nuke the old pages from storage. If your robots.txt goes away in the future, the old pages come back.... Ay least, that was my understanding from long ago...

      --
      "Go to CNN [for a] spell-checked, fact-checked summary" -- CmdrTaco
    3. Re:Except that evidence can and has been destroyed by ShaunC · · Score: 2

      It will respect that retroactively?!

      Yes, permanently; once a site is excluded there's apparently no way to get it back in the archive. I let a domain lapse a few years ago and someone else parked it for a year. I've had it back for several years with a permissive robots.txt but Wayback still says the site is excluded.

      --
      Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
  2. Internet Archive has a DMCA Exemption by JcMorin · · Score: 5, Informative

    Internet Archive has a DMCA Exemption http://archive.org/about/dmca....

  3. Well if Federal Courts say it's valid by Virtucon · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Where's the federal funding to make sure that it's a maintained repository? it's a charitable organization but I would think some sort of royalty arrangement should be provided. I mean if the copyright/trademark/patent system is making use of it or the plaintiffs/defendants then it should have some direct funding stream in terms of its value as a provider of information. I could also see litigants subpoenaing witnesses to ascertain how information is collected etc. That doesn't come for free, not by a long shot.

    --
    Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
    1. Re:Well if Federal Courts say it's valid by thegarbz · · Score: 2

      Where's the federal funding to make sure that it's a maintained repository? it's a charitable organization but I would think some sort of royalty arrangement should be provided.

      How did you get that logic? If all evidence submitted in court were combined with a requirement for continued funding for future litigation then the USA could likely add another zero to it's national debt.

  4. Re:Amazing such a thing would be trusted by stoborrobots · · Score: 3, Informative

    A random private citizen who is know for pointing a video camera at the relevant section of street every day. Like, say, some business that operates a surveillance security camera where the field of view includes the crime scene. Evidence like that is routinely gathered and used in court.

    Archive.org operates a similar video camera pointing at many web servers.

    --
    "Go to CNN [for a] spell-checked, fact-checked summary" -- CmdrTaco
  5. Re:Amazing such a thing would be trusted by Dragonslicer · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This is equivalent to asking a random private citizen that has nothing to do with a case to testify as a witness in said case.

    Er, what do you think an eyewitness is? Other than "random", but archive.org isn't randomly selected either.

  6. Re:Amazing such a thing would be trusted by coldsalmon · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Admitting the evidence is not the same as trusting it. The general rule is that any relevant evidence is admissible, and any evidence is relevant if "it has any tendency to make a fact more or less probable than it would be without the evidence." The Wayback Machine easily passes this test. The trier of fact has to look at all of the relevant evidence and make decisions about the quality of all of the items; he or she may decide that the data from the Wayback Machine is not of high quality. However, excluding the evidence means that the trier of fact cannot consider that evidence at all. It seems plain that the Wayback Machine is relevant evidence in an IP trial, as TFA says.

  7. Quick! by dlenmn · · Score: 2

    We need to make an internet archive archive!