# wayback witness

**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wayback-witness/466208
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [October 2, 2008, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wayback-witness/466208 "2008-10-02T18:08:06Z")
**Posts on this page:** 2
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![jackdavinci](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackdavinci/32/3259_2.png) [@jackdavinci](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jackdavinci)
#### Post date: [October 2, 2008, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wayback-witness/466208/1 "2008-10-02T18:08:06Z")

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The Wayback Machine is a website that stores old caches of other websites to act as a sort of archive of the internet. I’m sure their EULA probably discourages it, but has WM ever been used as a sort of ‘witness to the internet’ in any court cases?

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### Author: ![Erasmus\_Darwin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/c57346/32.png) [@Erasmus\_Darwin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Erasmus_Darwin)
#### Post date: [October 2, 2008, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wayback-witness/466208/2 "2008-10-02T18:35:38Z")

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Yes. The WSJ has a rather lengthy article on the subject: [http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB112242983960797010-qndezZbakQChoXkYrzRSRibbN6A\_20050828.html?mod=blogs](http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB112242983960797010-qndezZbakQChoXkYrzRSRibbN6A_20050828.html?mod=blogs)

In addition to the expected domain squatting and trademark issues it helps with, it was even used in a murder case in Canada.