Tricky situation - looking for advice

Expired domain but archived at the Wayback Machine

[spark658]

This is a difficult situation, and it relates to archive.org (the Wayback Machine). In 2001-2002 I had a personal website hosted on a domain that is now owned by someone else. The site does not contain my full name, but there are enough details there that if the archive implements a fulltext search engine as they are planning to do, it's possible that a future employer could find my old website. For reasons of privacy, I'd prefer that didn't happen. It isn't cached in any of the major search engines because the domain expired in 2003. I realize this is the purpose of the Wayback Machine, but when I had my site I did not know that it existed, and I don't want my personal information archived.

Currently, the domain is inactive and has been for a long, long time - if you type in the address, you get a "cannot find server" message - so I can't get the owner of the site to add a robots.txt file and fix the problem. In fact, I have no idea who this new owner is, only that they live in Taipei and seem to be a big name in the domain and search engine industry. I'm at a bit of a loss about what to do. My questions are:

1. I've e-mailed the help area at the Wayback Machine explaining the situation and requesting that all pages associated with my subdomain be removed, and I have not received a reply yet. Does anyone know if they respond to these requests without a court order?

2. Should I try contacting the current owner of the domain to see whether they would be willing to e-mail the Wayback Machine and request that my subdomain be removed?

3. The domain expires in November of this year. Can I try purchasing it myself, or is that considered inappropriate?

Thanks for any help you can provide!

[katana_one]

I can't help you on question 1.

On number 2, I think this would be a reasonable course of action - it really can't hurt try.

On 3, if the domain drops and you have an interest in it, why not? Unless there might be trademark issues involved, I can't see why it would be inappropriate.

Just my 2 cents.