Page Caching - is it Legal, is it Useful?

Bush administration get caught out.

[skipfactor]

After the insurrection in Iraq proved more stubborn than expected, the White House edited the original headline on its Web site of President Bush's May 1 speech, "President Bush Announces Combat Operations in Iraq Have Ended," to insert the word "Major" before combat.

"This smells like an attempt to revise the record, not just to withhold information but to alter the historical record in a self-interested way, and that is sleazier than usual..."

[bizreport.com...]

Wonder whose side the government's on in the great 'cached content legality' debate? ;)

[Woz]

The issue here is the legality of page caching, so,

First, lets not do politics!

Second, the Whitehouse Robots text File has been covered here [webmasterworld.com] so lets not go there again.

So, as I say, the real issue is the legality of Page Caching, an issue that does seem to resurface every now and then but without any real conclusion.

For purposes of definition, "Page Caching" in this context is "The Storing of Page Code by a Third Party Site/s which is then made available for public viewing on Third party Site/s."

The most well known proponent of this are Archive.org, but there are many sites both small and large who use Page Caching to offer a version of an external sites pages to their users. The crux of the matter though is that pages are being viewed on site for which they were not built and by and large have not obtained permission to display such pages.

Not only does this activity possibly veer into the realms of copyright violation, but it also raises other issues such as liability.

For example, you sell widgets for $50. However, a mistake was made on your site and they are advertised for $5. You quickly rectify the mistake, but then have customers asking for their $5 widgets, quoting the cached page as evidence. Who then is liable, you as the widget seller, or the site that had the unauthorized cache of the page with the incorrect price?

On the other hand, it can be a good backstop where the company advertises 2 week delivery and then changes to 4 week delivery stating that they never offered 2 week delivery in the first place. The cached page shows otherwise.

As I say, the real crux of the matter though is whether permission has been sought to cache the page in the first place.

I open the matter for discussion.

Onya
Woz