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MS Dirty Tricks Archive Trickles Back Online 83

networkBoy writes with word that The Register is following up its story about the Microsoft dirty tricks archive going offline. It appears that several individuals have the pieces to the puzzle and are looking for hosting resources. From the latter article: "The 3,000 document archive from the Comes antitrust trial, which disappeared from the web abruptly when Microsoft settled the case last week, is beginning to trickle back into view. A week ago the site was placed under password protection, Microsoft withdrew its own account of events, and so-called internet 'archive' archive.org apparently also pulled its mirror."
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MS Dirty Tricks Archive Trickles Back Online

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  • by gurps_npc ( 621217 ) on Thursday February 22, 2007 @12:01PM (#18110088) Homepage
    I would love to know what 'excuse' Archive.org gave for removing such essential internet history information. It seems to be there reason for existence.
    • by cperciva ( 102828 ) on Thursday February 22, 2007 @12:06PM (#18110144) Homepage
      I would love to know what 'excuse' Archive.org gave for removing such essential internet history information. It seems to be there reason for existence.

      The people who run archive.org aren't immune from copyright law. The legality of their archive is questionable at best, but if the copyright owner for some documents or web sites asks that they be removed, the legality is no longer questionable.
      • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday February 22, 2007 @12:17PM (#18110296)
        Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • by BeProf ( 597697 ) on Thursday February 22, 2007 @12:27PM (#18110436)
          IANAL, and I'm not familiar with the details of the case, but...

          When a case was settled out of court and a common feature of such settlements is that the complainant agree to shut their yaps in return for a large financial settlement from the respondant. And if this was an out of court settlement, none of the material in question was ever submitted into evidence and thus never became part of the public record.
          • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

            by sabt-pestnu ( 967671 )
            I believe you are thinking of the settlement details, which are usually not part of the court documents. Thus the "out of court" part of the name.

            As other posters note, as soon as it is ordered by the court or submitted to the court, unless it is sealed, it's part of the court (and thus public) record - put into the public domain. Witness the SCO vs IBM, SCO vs Novell, etc. documents published on Groklaw. Those cases are still in pre-trial motions (not necessarily still in pre-trial discovery, even if
            • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

              by BeProf ( 597697 )
              > Regardless, Comes vs Microsoft was actually in the trial phase. There were jurors and everything!

              In that case they should be public record unless sealed. Feel free to call the court in question and ask them for information on how to get those records.
        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by networkBoy ( 774728 )
          Yes it is, unless sealed by the court.
          To that end, since the register article says someone has a copy and needs a sympathetic host, I'll host all I can :)
          Anyone else have bandwith and space to spare? I'm thinking just torrent the whole tarball or rar and distribute it far and wide. Once the cat's out of the bag and multiplied it's gonna be hard to put back. As long as only one person has a copy though, it will be easy to quash.
          -nB
          • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

            by sabt-pestnu ( 967671 )
            Groklaw.com and its viewers have archived the documents and the host is preparing a permanent page for the Comes vs Microsoft trial documents.

            agreed. Data in one place is vulnerable to deletion. Data in many places is less so. ... noise might be an issue, though.
          • by rbanffy ( 584143 )
            We need to MD5 and SHA1 the files so they can't be tampered with (or, at least, we can easily show which ones were).

            Better yet, do it with the files themselves and then with the archive, so nobody can spread fake versions.
        • by Jon_S ( 15368 ) on Thursday February 22, 2007 @01:02PM (#18110984)
          According to MathFox on Groklaw [groklaw.net] (sitting in for PJ during her health break - we hope that's all it is),

          "These documents are all public domain materials by order of the judge in the case."
        • Isn't anything entered into evidence in a civil or criminal proceeding automatically part of the public domain?

          Public record, yes, at least by default. A judge can seal evidence. Public domain, no. Using copyrighted material as evidence in a trial does nothing to the copyright. Imagine the legal mayhem that this would cause if it were not so.

      • by Pantero Blanco ( 792776 ) on Thursday February 22, 2007 @12:32PM (#18110522)
        Isn't that the tactic that the Church of Scientology uses to shut up its critics? Using copyright law to prevent critical discussion of their materials?

        I don't think that copyright is the issue here, though; court records and submitted evidence wouldn't be covered by that, if I understand correctly.
    • by omeg ( 907329 )
      They're not a multi-billion dollar international. They rely on donations from the public and don't make a single dime of profit. As such, what makes you think they have the ability to get into a lawsuit? Microsoft might not have won if they did go to court over those files, but it would have been very costly. That's not something that they will want to do to their donators at all. Additionally, it would be bad press and make it very difficult for people to continue being donators, because they'd never know
    • by Animats ( 122034 ) on Thursday February 22, 2007 @12:25PM (#18110406) Homepage

      I would love to know what 'excuse' Archive.org gave for removing such essential internet history information.

      Anyone have the Internet Archive URL involved?

      Most likely, though, is that the site added a restrictive "robots.txt" file. The Archive obeys the "robots.txt" file retroactively. If you put one up, the Archive will disallow access to all the files that would have been blocked in the past according to the "robots.txt" file.

      The data isn't gone from the Archive, though. Access has just been disallowed. You can ask that it be re-allowed given the legal justification that the information is a public record.

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by Animaether ( 411575 )
        shhh... quit confusing the conspiracy theorists with things that are logical.

        It wouldn't surprise me if a similar policy exists for sites that are put entirely behind passwords, such as the site involved here: www.iowaconsumercase.org .
    • by gojomo ( 53369 )

      The Internet Archive's Web Archiving Blog [archive.org] has a post, "Confusion at The Register and Slashdot about the Wayback Machine [archive.org]", which addresses some of the concerns in this article and thread.

      [Just a pointer; my posts here are me speaking as myself, and not for the Archive.]

      - Gordon

  • by Timesprout ( 579035 ) on Thursday February 22, 2007 @12:04PM (#18110114)
    MS were just uploading all their documentation to Google Apps.
  • "The internet interprets censorship as damage, and routes around it"
  • by rhets ( 892663 ) on Thursday February 22, 2007 @12:05PM (#18110130)
    Is that packaged with Vista Ultimate?
    • ... "MS" and "Dirty Tricks" should always be in the same sentence.
    • No, it's packaged with "Windows Vista: Total World Domination" edition.
    • Vista Ultimate comes with everything.

      Hell, if I buy fifty of those limited-edition Bill Gates-signed numbered copies, I'd probably get a nymphomaniac Alessandra Ambrosio clone and a pony for free, rush-delivered.

      (hey, at the total price, it might even be possible...)
      • I'd probably get a nymphomaniac Alessandra Ambrosio clone and a pony

        Whoa, kinky. Apparently Bill's now into more than just *marketplace* Dominance.

        Though I guess I should have known from Vista's heavy emphasis on DRM. ("Digital restrictions" is just polite language for "data bondage." Only thing missing from the whole scene is the leather mask, really.)

        I wonder what kind of "dirty tricks" Alessandra's clone performs? For that matter...how about the pony?


        Wilbur? Wilbur?
  • They know what P2P is... don't?
  • by wherrera ( 235520 ) on Thursday February 22, 2007 @12:11PM (#18110226) Journal
    Seach PirateBay for a torrent called 'iowa'
  • by Anonymous Coward
    where shall i send it, and by what means?

    $ du --si
    23M ./attachments
    11M ./www.iowaconsumercase.org/011207
    154M ./www.iowaconsumercase.org/011607/0000
    108M ./www.iowaconsumercase.org/011607/1000
    93M ./www.iowaconsumercase.org/011607/2000
    173M ./www.iowaconsumercase.org/011607/3000
    265M ./www.iowaconsumercase.org/011607/4000
    152M ./www.iowaconsumercase.org/011607/5000
    118M ./www.iowaconsumercase.org/011607/6000
    126M ./www.iowaconsumercase.org/011607/7000
    119M ./www.iowaconsumercase.org/011607/8000
    94M ./www.iowaconsumer
    • by shudde ( 915065 ) on Thursday February 22, 2007 @12:28PM (#18110454)

      Personally I'd put it on the darknets, Tor [eff.org] and Freenet [freenetproject.org] both have sites dedicated to preserving unpopular/threatened/censored information. I'd imagine that I2P [i2p.net] would have similar resources although I'm not personally familiar with it.

      While darknet sites aren't reachable by the average computer users, this allows the more technically-minded to repopulate the mainstream net with the content when torrents or public hosts are taken down.

  • by vyrus128 ( 747164 ) <gwillen@nerdnet.org> on Thursday February 22, 2007 @12:17PM (#18110304) Homepage
    Forget hosting and start Bittorrenting the documents! They're almost certainly public record at this point, so it's not like MS can prosecute you for it. If you're really worried about that, dump them on Freenet. These documents are critical historical records -- they need to be distributed as widely as possible.
  • is this it? (Score:5, Informative)

    by metroplex ( 883298 ) on Thursday February 22, 2007 @12:28PM (#18110450) Homepage
    This appears to be it http://torrents.thepiratebay.org/hashtorrent/36201 52.torrent/iowa.3620152.TPB.torrent [thepiratebay.org] 2.58 Gb rar archive split in 31 parts.
    • 2.58 Gb rar archive split in 31 parts.
      Haha, it's just a repost from Usenet.
    • A bit OT, but..

      Why, oh why, do people RAR and split an archive, then offer it as one big download anyway ?

      The only upside I can see is that when StuffIt decodes the RAR I get to see its 'estimated time to unpack the archive' of 2938757659 hours (an amusing bug, considering that it then takes a few seconds to unpack an archive).
  • GrokLaw has it (Score:5, Informative)

    by HaeMaker ( 221642 ) on Thursday February 22, 2007 @12:33PM (#18110526) Homepage
    Groklaw has the entire archive.

    http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200702200 83801959 [groklaw.net]
  • MS Dirty Tricks? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by BoRegardless ( 721219 ) on Thursday February 22, 2007 @12:39PM (#18110628)
    That is news? Ballmer blasting companies that say or post things he doesn't like is news?

    This is starting to sound like Anna Nicole in a way, but it is neat to see Slashdotters responding with their own caches of materials & Ballmer will not be able to do a cover up.

    Managing MS must be a real pain for Ballmer at this point. He & Billy Gates probably spend far more time trying to fend off issues & competition than they ever spend on "innovations".
  • networkBoy writes with word

    See, there's your problem right there... writing about Microsoft conspiracies with Word...
  • What are you talking about? We have ALWAYS been allied with Redmond^H^H^H^HEastasia. You should hand-deliver these purported documents to the Records Department for proper archival.
  • Knowing that Microsoft has overcharged me on it's products due it's monopoly, and the fact that it uses anti-competitive tactics to keep it's monopoly has made me insistent on not buying it's products unless it's absolutely necessary.

    That's a major reason why I won't buy the XBox 360. The gaming industry is just another Microsoft monopoly forming.
  • I'd consider hosting it, at least on a dreamhost shared hosting account. Cost is minimal, and I've got a separate account for my personal stuff, and ~2 TB of monthly bandwidth, which should be plenty for text ;-)

    Send me an e-mail at moornblade at gmail dot com
  • If the Internet Archive did this, I'll never trust them again as either impartial, or accurate. And I'd surely never give them any money.
  • Here you go:

    http://thepiratebay.org/tor/3620152/iowa [thepiratebay.org]

    I am seeding. Please make the swarm bigger.

    --
    BMO
  • Would I be paranoid in thinking someone stuck a spanner into the back of the server?

A committee takes root and grows, it flowers, wilts and dies, scattering the seed from which other committees will bloom. -- Parkinson

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