Cache crisis: could surfers see search engine changes? Photograph: Chien-Min Chung/AP
Jack mentioned the possible legal threat to search engine caches in a post at the weekend (Adult site sues Amazon over sexy images) - and now other threats are appearing.
Internet archive has been sued for the same thing in a trademark action between two similarly-named companies. Here's a CNet article on the subject:
In preparing the case, representatives of [law firm] Earley Follmer used the Wayback Machine to turn up old Web pages--some dating to 1999--originally posted by the plaintiff, Healthcare Advocates of Philadelphia.
Last week Healthcare Advocates sued both the Harding Earley firm and the Internet Archive, saying the access to its old Web pages, stored in the Internet Archive's database, was unauthorized and illegal.
It's the kind of thing that Guardian Unlimited's dark overlord Simon Waldman noted a while ago... we seem to be at the start of a (potentially long) process of deciding just how responsible search engines are for the material they keep.
Of course, information seekers don't mind about caching: it's useful. But many companies are now starting to worry about it - for various reasons. The easy way for balloon-poppers like Healthcare Advocates to stop caching would be to find a case where the actual contents inside a cached page turn out to be illegal (libellous, for example). But who would that really help?
