Those of you who know me well are familiar with my fascination with all things archival, especially as it relates to the archaeology of the web. I am quite sure that in my golden years I will retire to a pith helmet and meerschaum pipe, evolving into a full time armchair anthropologist of the PastWeb. Interesting case in point comes to us from TechDirt, which reports on a LawMeme post about a run of the mill business lawsuit. The twist? The plaintiff “tried to amend its complaint to accuse on of the defendant’s lawyers of hacking Archive.org (Bewster’s Internet Archive).” Seems there was incriminating stuff on past versions of a site in question, stuff the plaintiffs did not want preserved through the eternity of time. The defendants, according to the suit, tried to “hack” archive.org to find the lost data. This I love – someone trying to plumb the Eternal to prove a point in the present. Priceless.
PS – Neat new interview with Brewster here. (Thanks Gary.)
Excellent selection of meerschaum pipes in Berkeley at Schmidt’s Pub. (v. relevant comment, no?)
On a more serious note the presence of media archives makes court injunctions to stop the publication of articles much harder to enforce. Once published the offending articles stay “out there” making a mockery of the courts.
More meerschaums are at Marty Pulver’s place, on Battery near Sacto in SF… those $10 pipes are probably pressed stone, and may not color as reliably as you’d wish…. 😉