Patent Law

Wayback machine useless?

By Lawrence B. Ebert, Esq.

Has the Wayback machine become useless?
Yesterday, the "archives" were changing faster than I could read them.
Broken path, file not found, altered files, pop-up redirects, etc.

Here is the Wayback archive for huntingtonbeach.com
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://huntingtonbeach.com

Here is yesterday's "archive" for November 29, 2001 -
http://www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/nov29-2001.gif
Notice the dates - they were changing old pages so fast, they were unable to get it right. Today, it is "updated 10-14-06".
I gathered a load of screen shots, and archived them off-site.
I do not enjoy being called a liar.

The reason?
The press release -
http://www.townsend.com/news/pressrelease.asp?o=8033
The lawsuit -
http://www.townsend.com/files/Flotsam.pdf

My conclusion: The Wayback Machine has been, and is being hacked. It used to be so much fun, to go back and see what pages looked like.
NOW, however, all you see is what SOMEBODY wants you to believe the pages looked like. Pages now say "Surf City USA", instead of what they used to say, just "Surf City".

I am very disappointed by this turn of events.
The Wayback Machine is now BROKEN and USELESS.
Because it has been polluted with LIES. History rewritten.
Comments?

See also IPBiz post:

http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2007/12/on-reliability-of-wikipedia-for-prior.html

Full post as published by IPBiz on February 18, 2008 (boomark / email).