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Aren't you glad you didn't cite this webpage?

ssnat.com

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Re: Aren't you glad you didn't cite this webpage?

#71

Post by dublinben »

elmuchoprez wrote: post #18
coldpie wrote: post #14

So, what's the solution, here? It seems reasonable for a court opinion to include a copy of the source, if possible. What about for something like a YouTube video, which could disappear at any time, but can't be represented on paper? How would you agree on a digital format for representing a supreme court opinion?

Some sort of verified caching protocol. Like mixing together the Wayback Machine and a notary.

Isn't the answer to this DHT? A well chosen hash algorithm should give you suitable prevention from collisions and serve as a way to verify the contents of the retrieved file.

Re: Aren't you glad you didn't cite this webpage?

#73

Post by FridayWithJohn »

thrush wrote: post #64
FridayWithJohn wrote: post #11

Had to use the good old "Wayback machine" to see what was originally on that site that warranted some citing in court case. Looks like it was all about the school shootings. here's the link: http://bit.ly/1bF1kB4

I think HN recommends not using link shorteners. It's nice to know that people aren't tracking your clicks.

oh, thanks. Didn't know that. Won't do it in the future :-)

Re: Aren't you glad you didn't cite this webpage?

#74

Post by at-fates-hands »

jaysonelliot wrote: post #30

I publish a print magazine. Up to this point, we've avoided printing URLs in the magazine, because our printed issues may last longer than the links will stay live. To solve the problem, we're launching our own link shortener this month, and printing our own shortened links in the magazine. That way we can control what happens when link rot sets in, whether redirecting or caching content on our own servers if necessa…

What's the additional cost to maintain something like this long-term?

I'm just thinking about articles that could be 10-15 years old (10-15 years from now mind you.), you could have a substantial database of links to maintain and keep updated, not a small task.

Re: Aren't you glad you didn't cite this webpage?

#75

Post by rayiner »

For people positing hypothetical solutions to this problem, consider this exercise. Look at this case: http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=1254092943969513.... This is a Supreme Court case from 1899. There is a citation to a Sixth Circuit case on page 238 (after "'reserved' cities") that has disappeared in the Google Scholar copy, but appears in Westlaw as: 54 U.S. App. 723, 85 Fed. Rep. 271, 29 C.C.A. 141, 46 L.R.A. 122. Westlaw still happily pulls up this 114 year-old citation to the Federal Reporter. That's the sort of time scale legal documents need to operate on. I'm not really convinced anything on the internet as we know it today can offer permanence comparable to printing out a bunch of copies and shipping them around the country.

Re: Aren't you glad you didn't cite this webpage?

#76

Post by pcrh »

alanh wrote: post #37
valtron wrote: post #2

http://web.archive.org/web/20110414214749/http://ssnat.com/

I get an empty download file… is that expected? (Must be a Wayback Machine glitch, maybe caused by the surge of popularity, I figure. It was supposed to have content about school shooters)

In case anyone else is wondering what this is:

http://pastebin.com/weQzr4Kp

Re: Aren't you glad you didn't cite this webpage?

#77

Post by smsm42 »

elmuchoprez wrote: post #18
coldpie wrote: post #14

So, what's the solution, here? It seems reasonable for a court opinion to include a copy of the source, if possible. What about for something like a YouTube video, which could disappear at any time, but can't be represented on paper? How would you agree on a digital format for representing a supreme court opinion?

Some sort of verified caching protocol. Like mixing together the Wayback Machine and a notary.

I wonder if archive.org would provide a paid authenticated (notarized) snapshot service, on-demand (i.e. by request and after payment, create a copy and guarantee it's not changed and deleted ever) - maybe they could even make some money out of the thing.

Re: Aren't you glad you didn't cite this webpage?

#79

Post by lambda »

ynniv wrote: post #34
jaysonelliot wrote: post #30

I publish a print magazine. Up to this point, we've avoided printing URLs in the magazine, because our printed issues may last longer than the links will stay live. To solve the problem, we're launching our own link shortener this month, and printing our own shortened links in the magazine. That way we can control what happens when link rot sets in, whether redirecting or caching content on our own servers if necessa…

Except that your shortener service won't last as long as your print issues either. With the original URL there's still the hope that the Wayback Machine is still maintained and had visited the page. It's a hard problem.

Probably best to list both the original URL, and some kind of link that has an archived version (either your own, or from the Wayback Machine). And of course include the date as well. With the date and the original URL, you can always use the Wayback machine or some other archival service like WebCite to attempt to find an archived version.

No citation is guaranteed to be readable after a certain amount of time. All citations are merely a reference for identify the resource that you're looking for, and you need to find it yourself in a library or from the publisher. But the publisher may not exist, you may not be able to find libraries with copies, etc. So, you can only do so much.

But if you cite the URL and date, and at least one alternative way to access the content like the Wayback Machine or WebCite or your own, you give people a pretty good chance.

Perhaps there needs to be a peer-to-peer web citation database that publishers, libraries, and individuals can join. When a book or journal contains a web citation, the publisher archives a copy of that page in their database. When a library or individual buys a book, they can pull the archived copies from the publishers. This will ensure that as long as someone out there who has a copy of the book has also maintained their web citation database and is on the network, you can pull the citations from them.

I believe that archiving of publicly available material, as archive.org does and Google's cache does, is considered not to be copyright infringement (as long as it obeys the limits in robots.txt and noarchive meta tags), as it is sufficiently transformative. So this shouldn't be a problem unless someone explicitly requested that the page not be archived, in which case you probably shouldn't rely on it for a citation.

Re: Aren't you glad you didn't cite this webpage?

#80

Post by ars »

jaysonelliot wrote: post #30

I publish a print magazine. Up to this point, we've avoided printing URLs in the magazine, because our printed issues may last longer than the links will stay live. To solve the problem, we're launching our own link shortener this month, and printing our own shortened links in the magazine. That way we can control what happens when link rot sets in, whether redirecting or caching content on our own servers if necessa…

> we're launching our own link shortener this month, and printing our own shortened links in the magazine. That way we can control what happens when link rot sets in, whether redirecting or caching content on our own servers if necessary (and allowed by copyright).

That seems worse to me. Sometimes you can gain some info by just the hostname, and pages in the URL. Now all you'll see is random numbers.

And are you really going to spend the money to check every url you have ever published? You have to do it by hand you know. A tool can help but won't tell you if the content of the page changed.

If you want to do this properly use global footnote numbering in each issue. Publish the real URL and the page title (very important since you can google for those words). Each url gets a footnote number that is unique in that issue and you print the number near the url.

Readers can lookup a url by the magazine issue and footnote number.

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