[LINK] Date stamping copies of web pages

[Tom Worthington]

At 09:48 AM 21/02/2007, Mike Shearer wrote:
>Is there any way of making a copy of a web page and date stamping it 
>such that the copy would be accepted in a court as evidence that the 
>page was as shown on that date? ...

Yes, but you just have to convince the court that what you are 
showing them is really what the web user saw. One way is to use a 
copy made by a disinterested third party. As an example the Internet 
archive has versions of your JCU ITR web page between 1999 and 2007 
<http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.jcu.edu.au/office/itr>.

There are third party products to keep a copy of each version of a 
web page and content management systems which allow you to roll back 
the site to show what it looked like in the past (any company or 
government agency doing serious business online needs such a 
facility). But you still have to convince the court the system is 
working correctly. There is no magic stamp to put on the documents.

ps: This what lawyers hire me to tell them 
<http://www.infoage.idg.com.au/pp.php?id=459444430&fp=4&fpid=675408222>.  ;-)



Tom Worthington FACS HLM tom.worthington at tomw.net.au Ph: 0419 496150
Director, Tomw Communications Pty Ltd            ABN: 17 088 714 309
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617                http://www.tomw.net.au/
Visiting Fellow, ANU      Blog: http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/atom.xml