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Legality of Internet Archive at Issue
The Internet Archive (www.archive.org) touts itself as “a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form”. The non-profit archive was created in 1996 to preserve web pages; you can enter a particular site into its search engine, and access various iterations of that site as it has appeared over the years. Of course, the Internet Archive depends on creating and storing exact copies of web pages, an activity that obviously raises copyright issues, and that has become the focus of an ongoing lawsuit.
In 2003, Healthcare Advocates Inc. sued another company for trade-mark infringement and for taking trade secrets. The defendant firm used the Internet Archive to obtain old versions of the Healthcare Advocates website, and demonstrated that some of the information at issue was not secret because Healthcare Advocates had made it available on its own website.
Not pleased by this development, Healthcare Advocates sued the Internet Archive. Healthcare Advocates claimed that the archive failed to protect information even after Healthcare Advocates asked how access to certain files could be restricted.
Website owners can take steps to prevent their sites from being included in the Internet Archive, and can also ask that information in the archive be removed. Whether Healthcare Advocates made such a request, and whether the Internet Archive responded appropriately, is presumably an issue in the lawsuit. Another underlying issue is the value and purpose of the archive itself; the Internet Archive says that it provides a valuable social and historical service by preserving web pages over time, while Healthcare Advocates claim that the archive’s indiscriminate collection of information violates copyright and may not be appropriate.
For additional information, visit:
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/news/editorial/14234814.htm