digitalghost - 7:44 pm on Jul 13, 2005 (gmt 0)

The N.Y. Times is reporting that Internet Archives is being sued.

The Internet Archive was created in 1996 as the institutional memory of the online world, storing snapshots of ever-changing Web sites and collecting other multimedia artifacts. Now the nonprofit archive is on the defensive in a legal case that represents a strange turn in the debate over copyrights in the digital age.

Original Article [nytimes.com]

Alternate Link [news.com.com]

This case could have significant impact on caching and archiving protocol. I'm sure Google will be watching the case closely as they operate their own extensive caching system.

Ostensibly the case seems to hinge on robots.txt, but the real gist of this may be a decision on whether extensive caching is legal or not. Fair Use will be examined quite closely.

Last week Healthcare Advocates sued both the Harding Earley firm and the Internet Archive, saying the access to its old Web pages, stored in the Internet Archive's database, was unauthorized and illegal.

[edited by: Brett_Tabke at 8:30 pm (utc) on July 13, 2005]
[edit reason] fixed link - added quote [/edit]