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A way to bring Web sites back to life is also a way to bring mistakes back so they can haunt us all anew. Lawyers need to wake up and smell the libel suits.
  technofile
Al Fasoldt's reviews and commentaries, continuously available online since 1983

Web 'time machine' brings back old sites, mistakes and all


Oct. 31, 2001


By Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2001, Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2001, The Post Standard

   Ever wish you could bring an old Web site back to life?
   It's no longer just a fantasy. A new and totally free Internet service lets you travel back in time to view old Web sites that are no longer running. You can view entire Web sites, just as they were in the past. All you do is choose a time (by month and year) and type a Web address to step into the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. You'll be in the past in a few seconds.
   At least that's the way it's supposed to work. The site, at web.archive.org, became an instant celebrity as soon as it opened last week, and all this attention made it faint under the stress, It should be back up when you read this. If it's not, try it again in another few days.
   Time travel is easy to do through books and movies, but it's not something most of us have done on the Web. It's an eerie experience opening pages that died and went to Web-page heaven a few years ago.
   I checked to see if the Wayback Machine would let me travel down Memory-chip Lane to my old Web site, which I took down a couple of years ago. It did it easily, showing me the entire site as of various dates. In other words, not only was I able to view all of my old site; I was able to view all of my old site as it existed at various times.
   This seems like good news for Web surfers, but it should make every lawyer wake up in a hurry. Listen carefully if you're a lawyer who represents Web development companies or Web designers.
   A way to bring Web sites back to life is also a way to bring mistakes back so they can haunt us all anew. A libelous comment on a Web page, for example, would have to be removed immediately, before it could be picked up by a Web archiving robot. If it is not corrected as quickly as possible, it could be around forever. If I were a lawyer, I'd rewrite the rules my clients had to follow immediately.
   A bonus on the Wayback Machine is a large collection of TV clips, old advertising movies and what seem like instructional movies from about 1900 to the 1950s. They're available in both MPEG and DivX formats. DivX movies are much smaller than MPEG versions while having much higher quality, so choose the DivX versions. Windows users can get the required DivX decoding files free from www.divx-digest.com/software/divxcodec4.html. Mac users can go to the same site (look for the Mac section) or to www.macdivx.com. Linux and BeOS users also have DivX capabilities.
   Click the "Internet Archive" link on the main page to go to the archive of movies and TV clips. There are many other fascinating archives, too. Spend some time on the site, and then step into that time machine. See you in 1996!