In case now pending in the district court of Colorado, presided over by that court’s embattled Chief Judge Edward Nottingham, the Internet Archive may prove to be a source of incriminating forensic evidence.
Briefly, the case arises from allegations that a resort’s ski instructor raped a teenage girl. The girl and her family have sued the resort, noting that it gave assurances that any ski instructor working with children must have a “clean criminal record.” Read full story. The accused instructor, in fact, has a lenghty rap sheet.
In its response to the lawsuit, the resort contended that it never promised that criminal checks were performed on employees and supplied copies of its Web pages to support the contention. However, the family’s attorney said that the supplied offers-of-proof are phony, noting that a search of old Web pages on www.archive.org revealed that the resort had, in fact, made such representations since 2002. Moreover, he said, the archive site contained no pages similar to the ones that the resort supplied. “As the record now stands before the court, it appears that [the resort’s] affidavits are false and misleading, the alleged copy of [the resort’s] Web site is fabricated and [the resort] has attempted to destroy evidence.”