Steve Marsden's WBM screenshot: The CEOP Home page for April 30, 2007 also refers to Missing Madeleine.

@ Tony Bennett - To use Al Gore's memorable turn of phrase in his film about climate change: 'An Inconvenient Truth'? - airbrushed, or deleted out of existence.

We need a qualified and experienced neutral to calmly assess the entire history of this - and give us an expert opinion (sorry to all the many professed experts on this thread)

Tony, the 2 neutral profs I've contacted (both of whom are highly qualified and work in the field of computer archiving on the tech side - one American, one Austrian) both conceded that it is all very 'weird'; that either scenario is feasible but that error has the edge; that no amount of 'outsider' digging is going to solve this; and that the only ones who can follow the trail of errors (or not) and give a definitive answer are the IA team. I think we're scuppered!

@ Rufus T - Like many others I find this subject a little hard to follow, but I have stuck with it and am managing to follow the ongoing debate as best I can. The one thing that is beyond my understanding is peoples inability to be civil, debate is good, discussion is good but sniping and bitching is not. It may be cheesy and twee but it really is nice to be nice.

I concur - my old dad used to tell us kids "if you can't say anything nice, don't open your mouth'! The whole MBM issue is very emotive and I'm sure the intention is purely debate but it's not always easy to keep a lid on things when you're convinced your argument is the right one! Several times I've typed a response and then calmed down before I've clicked send - editing usually makes for a more rational response!!!

@HKP
The wooshing was done a while ago, not long after they realised (told) that there was an issue. We can't be sure that anything we are picking up is the true reflection unless a capture by Stevo  at the time was conducted and made available

Hi HKP - I realise that the 30 April pages were wooshed almost immediately but I wasn't aware that the actual 30 April calendar date (showing on each of the calendars as a blue circle) had been completely removed/erased until now, it was certainly still there a few days ago. Thought it was a new development (think it's only very recent). Doesn't really make much difference in the whole scheme of things other than to show the IA's conclusion.

skyrocket wrote:@HKP
The wooshing was done a while ago, not long after they realised (told) that there was an issue. We can't be sure that anything we are picking up is the true reflection unless a capture by Stevo  at the time was conducted and made available

Hi HKP - I realise that the 30 April pages were wooshed almost immediately but I wasn't aware that the actual 30 April calendar date (showing on each of the calendars as a blue circle) had been completely removed/erased until now, it was certainly still there a few days ago. Thought it was a new development (think it's only very recent). Doesn't really make much difference in the whole scheme of things other than to show the IA's conclusion.

Hi skyrocket,
The easiest thing for IA to do was to unlink from the calendar, remove 30/04 files from public view and tell people to contact the police if they think a crime has been committed. That's exactly what they've done, it explains nothing unfortunately.

HKP wrote:

skyrocket wrote:@HKP
The wooshing was done a while ago, not long after they realised (told) that there was an issue. We can't be sure that anything we are picking up is the true reflection unless a capture by Stevo  at the time was conducted and made available

Hi HKP - I realise that the 30 April pages were wooshed almost immediately but I wasn't aware that the actual 30 April calendar date (showing on each of the calendars as a blue circle) had been completely removed/erased until now, it was certainly still there a few days ago. Thought it was a new development (think it's only very recent). Doesn't really make much difference in the whole scheme of things other than to show the IA's conclusion.

Hi skyrocket,
The easiest thing for IA to do was to unlink from the calendar, remove 30/04 files from public view and tell people to contact the police if they think a crime has been committed. That's exactly what they've done, it explains nothing.

All 'too late' though, HKP, don't you think?

The 30/40 'files' (removed?) HAVE been SEEN by the 'public'

'Saved' 'Screenshotted' for posterity, on hundreds/thousands of 'comps/disks'. (around the WORLD)

Surely, 'removing' er, 'contentious' files, only ADDS to 'conspiratorial theories'

"Out of the frying pan............." and all 'that'?

jeanmonroe wrote:

HKP wrote:

skyrocket wrote:@HKP
The wooshing was done a while ago, not long after they realised (told) that there was an issue. We can't be sure that anything we are picking up is the true reflection unless a capture by Stevo  at the time was conducted and made available

Hi HKP - I realise that the 30 April pages were wooshed almost immediately but I wasn't aware that the actual 30 April calendar date (showing on each of the calendars as a blue circle) had been completely removed/erased until now, it was certainly still there a few days ago. Thought it was a new development (think it's only very recent). Doesn't really make much difference in the whole scheme of things other than to show the IA's conclusion.

Hi skyrocket,
The easiest thing for IA to do was to unlink from the calendar, remove 30/04 files from public view and tell people to contact the police if they think a crime has been committed. That's exactly what they've done, it explains nothing.

All 'too late' though, HKP, don't you think?

The 30/40 'files' (removed?) HAVE been SEEN by the 'public'

'Saved' 'Screenshotted' for posterity, on hundreds/thousands of 'comps/disks'. (around the WORLD)

Surely, 'removing' er, 'contentious' files, only ADDS to 'conspiratorial theories'

"Out of the frying pan............." and all 'that'?

I think you're right Jean, IA could have handled this a lot better, they've added fuel to the fire if you ask me.

I don't know who originally found the codexgeo.co.uk entries or how, but that had the same issue at the same time - i.e. an impossible 16033 entries all recorded at 30/4/07 11:58:03.

Those entries are now also gone.  As stated by other posters we don't have the information to make definitive statements, only those with access to the original source information might be able to, but there being at least one other site with the same problem leads me to leaning towards it being an error in the indexing.

rustyjames wrote:I don't know who originally found the codexgeo.co.uk entries or how, but that had the same issue at the same time - i.e. an impossible 16033 entries all recorded at 30/4/07 11:58:03.

Those entries are now also gone.  As stated by other posters we don't have the information to make definitive statements, only those with access to the original source information might be able to, but there being at least one other site with the same problem leads me to leaning towards it being an error in the indexing.

Rustyjames, your posts have been the voice of reason, the codexgeo issue was found by Seahorse over by. The exact same questions can be asked, was the codexgeo site crawled 30/04 what if any true files were found. Alas I'm going to take a guess that we will never know, for IA I would have thought that their reputation has taken a dent. There have been several court case in the UK that have called upon Wayback evidence, in future (if nothing more is said) defendants will be pointing at this issue as their defence (against Wayback capture evidence). I would add that Chris Butlers statement of 31st July & 7 October (being the correct dates when archived) do not make sense.

I think it is misleading to assert that WBM is unreliable in its use for electronic evidence in court cases as this is not what WBM was designed for and they stipulate as much:

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

The use of internet publications in legal affairs is surrounded by serious concerns as to their reliability, in particular about their date of availability.  Even if an earlier date may be retrieved for a particular internet page, it remains uncertain whether the retrieved page is faithful as to what was actually available at the older date.
Courts involved with intellectual property allow more and more that internet publications are used as part of the state of the art, but these courts usually apply very strict criteria with respect to the level of proof about the evidence provided.
The scarce Case Law so far, in which internet publications were introduced as evidence, clearly distinguishes sources having different reliabilities.
A problem arises when the publication is from a source of unknown reliability, and may not even mention a publication date.  Here further evidence to establish or confirm the publication date may be obtained, such as from an internet archiving service.  In this context, “The Wayback Machine” ([You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]) is often mentioned as the most prominent internet archiving service available.
The Internet Archive Wayback Machine is a service that allows people to visit archived versions of Web sites.  Visitors to the Wayback Machine can type in a URL, select a date range, and then begin surfing on an archived version of the Web.
The Wayback Machine however was not designed for legal use.  Its target users are researchers, historians, and scholars, not lawyers and judges.  Its purpose is to provide “a memory” for society, as comprehensive as possible.  In its design, it is therefore more important to provide links between various pieces of related information rather than an authentic picture of the internet at a particular point in history.
The vast volume of available information, and the rate at which this is generated and modified, also imposes practical limits to the Internet Archive.
These factors affect what can and what cannot be asked from the Wayback Machine.  They are causing possible pitfalls for a erroneous interpretation of the search results, and for drawing the wrong conclusions.  An interesting article on this subject by B.Howell published in the Journal of Internet Law of February 2006.
The present series of articles, of which this is the introduction, discusses some of the recent observations and examples the authors found with respect to possible legal (ab)use of the Wayback Machine in legal proceedings in Belgium with respect to Intellectual Property, and in their preparation therefore.

Joss wrote:I think it is misleading to assert that WBM is unreliable in its use for electronic evidence in court cases as this is not what WBM was designed for and they stipulate as much:

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

The use of internet publications in legal affairs is surrounded by serious concerns as to their reliability, in particular about their date of availability.  Even if an earlier date may be retrieved for a particular internet page, it remains uncertain whether the retrieved page is faithful as to what was actually available at the older date.
Courts involved with intellectual property allow more and more that internet publications are used as part of the state of the art, but these courts usually apply very strict criteria with respect to the level of proof about the evidence provided.
The scarce Case Law so far, in which internet publications were introduced as evidence, clearly distinguishes sources having different reliabilities.
A problem arises when the publication is from a source of unknown reliability, and may not even mention a publication date.  Here further evidence to establish or confirm the publication date may be obtained, such as from an internet archiving service.  In this context, “The Wayback Machine” ([You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]) is often mentioned as the most prominent internet archiving service available.
The Internet Archive Wayback Machine is a service that allows people to visit archived versions of Web sites.  Visitors to the Wayback Machine can type in a URL, select a date range, and then begin surfing on an archived version of the Web.
The Wayback Machine however was not designed for legal use.  Its target users are researchers, historians, and scholars, not lawyers and judges.  Its purpose is to provide “a memory” for society, as comprehensive as possible.  In its design, it is therefore more important to provide links between various pieces of related information rather than an authentic picture of the internet at a particular point in history.
The vast volume of available information, and the rate at which this is generated and modified, also imposes practical limits to the Internet Archive.
These factors affect what can and what cannot be asked from the Wayback Machine.  They are causing possible pitfalls for a erroneous interpretation of the search results, and for drawing the wrong conclusions.  An interesting article on this subject by B.Howell published in the Journal of Internet Law of February 2006.
The present series of articles, of which this is the introduction, discusses some of the recent observations and examples the authors found with respect to possible legal (ab)use of the Wayback Machine in legal proceedings in Belgium with respect to Intellectual Property, and in their preparation therefore.

I bet some of these people are interested onlookers.


[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

HKP wrote:

Joss wrote:I think it is misleading to assert that WBM is unreliable in its use for electronic evidence in court cases as this is not what WBM was designed for and they stipulate as much:

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

The use of internet publications in legal affairs is surrounded by serious concerns as to their reliability, in particular about their date of availability.  Even if an earlier date may be retrieved for a particular internet page, it remains uncertain whether the retrieved page is faithful as to what was actually available at the older date.
Courts involved with intellectual property allow more and more that internet publications are used as part of the state of the art, but these courts usually apply very strict criteria with respect to the level of proof about the evidence provided.
The scarce Case Law so far, in which internet publications were introduced as evidence, clearly distinguishes sources having different reliabilities.
A problem arises when the publication is from a source of unknown reliability, and may not even mention a publication date.  Here further evidence to establish or confirm the publication date may be obtained, such as from an internet archiving service.  In this context, “The Wayback Machine” ([You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]) is often mentioned as the most prominent internet archiving service available.
The Internet Archive Wayback Machine is a service that allows people to visit archived versions of Web sites.  Visitors to the Wayback Machine can type in a URL, select a date range, and then begin surfing on an archived version of the Web.
The Wayback Machine however was not designed for legal use.  Its target users are researchers, historians, and scholars, not lawyers and judges.  Its purpose is to provide “a memory” for society, as comprehensive as possible.  In its design, it is therefore more important to provide links between various pieces of related information rather than an authentic picture of the internet at a particular point in history.
The vast volume of available information, and the rate at which this is generated and modified, also imposes practical limits to the Internet Archive.
These factors affect what can and what cannot be asked from the Wayback Machine.  They are causing possible pitfalls for a erroneous interpretation of the search results, and for drawing the wrong conclusions.  An interesting article on this subject by B.Howell published in the Journal of Internet Law of February 2006.
The present series of articles, of which this is the introduction, discusses some of the recent observations and examples the authors found with respect to possible legal (ab)use of the Wayback Machine in legal proceedings in Belgium with respect to Intellectual Property, and in their preparation therefore.

I bet some of these people are interested onlookers.


[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

I have no idea about that, but that isn't very many cases.


Recently, attempts have been made to preserve web data in the form of web archives, but these are still very much in their infancy. The Internet Archive ([You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] is a US-based non-profit, private archiving initiative that provides an open resource storing past "images" of websites, which are retrievable using its search engine, the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. From available information (see e.g. [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] and an article by B. Howell in the Journal of Internet Law, February 2006 at [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] the following details emerge: Though the Archive itself is non-profit, it receives its data from a for-profit company, Alexa Internet, which uses proprietary web crawl technology to harvest web data for its business interests. This data it donates to the Archive after a six month delay. The web crawls are not comprehensive: only non-password protected sites deemed of interest are captured, while site owners may further block the crawler, or request exclusion or retroactive removal of pages from the archive. The "images" are not necessarily instantaneous snap shots of a website, but may be assembled in the course of successive crawls. Links may not be preserved, or, if intact, may connect to different material than at the time of capture. Moreover, the archiving format may not be true to the original format of the site. The archived site may not be displayed in the format of the original or with all its functionality intact. Security structures are also not clear: the archive uses remote shell communication to its storage servers, but the extent of access once connected is not clear. Though there is a registration portal, users can gain access anonymously. Finally, there are known proprietary issues of the information retrieved and the terms of use advises the user that they use any content at their own risk.
The Internet Archive is not an archive in the classical sense. The givens of established archives such as authenticity and integrity of archived material - how truthful is archived material to the original, and how inviolable is the material against modification - cannot be taken for granted. This affects the evidentiary value of material retrieved from this resource. The Internet Archive itself for a fee offers an authentication service in the form of an affidavit, but states (see [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] "Before asking the Internet Archive to authenticate your documents, we ask that you please seek judicial notice or simply ask your opposing party to stipulate to the documents' authenticity. Of course, the best source of such information is the party who posted the information on the URLs at issue, and the second-best source of such information is someone who actually accessed the historical versions of the URLs".
3.3 Recent considerations in case law of the evidentiary value of information retrieved from the Internet, and the Internet Archive in particular, may be of interest. However, such case law is sparse.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

skyrocket wrote:@HKP
The wooshing was done a while ago, not long after they realised (told) that there was an issue. We can't be sure that anything we are picking up is the true reflection unless a capture by Stevo  at the time was conducted and made available

Hi HKP - I realise that the 30 April pages were wooshed almost immediately but I wasn't aware that the actual 30 April calendar date (showing on each of the calendars as a blue circle) had been completely removed/erased until now, it was certainly still there a few days ago. Thought it was a new development (think it's only very recent). Doesn't really make much difference in the whole scheme of things other than to show the IA's conclusion.

Yes they were still there a few days ago, but more importantly the internal coding of the pages have all been manually manipulated with the April 30th dates in 'next/previous capture' erased from all mccann related CEOP captures. [relevant sections are twice preserved in this thread] I know some people will be thrilled at this 'correction' but it's not so much a correction as an eradication of evidence and of the historical record. Highly unethical. Among those who care about such things IA has destroyed itself and for what? The McCanns? This is way bigger than the McCanns.

whodunit wrote:

skyrocket wrote:@HKP
The wooshing was done a while ago, not long after they realised (told) that there was an issue. We can't be sure that anything we are picking up is the true reflection unless a capture by Stevo  at the time was conducted and made available

Hi HKP - I realise that the 30 April pages were wooshed almost immediately but I wasn't aware that the actual 30 April calendar date (showing on each of the calendars as a blue circle) had been completely removed/erased until now, it was certainly still there a few days ago. Thought it was a new development (think it's only very recent). Doesn't really make much difference in the whole scheme of things other than to show the IA's conclusion.

Yes they were still there a few days ago, but more importantly the internal coding of the pages have all been manually manipulated with the April 30th dates in 'next/previous capture' erased from all mccann related CEOP captures. [relevant sections are twice preserved in this thread] I know some people will be thrilled at this 'correction' but it's not so much a correction as an eradication of evidence and of the historical record. Highly unethical. Among those who care about such things IA has destroyed itself and for what? The McCanns? This is way bigger than the McCanns.

Can you definitively prove that assertion?

whodunit wrote:

whodunit wrote:CEOP homepage capture April 27, 2007

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

mccann.html capture dated May 13, 2007

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

CEOP homepage capture May 14, 2007.^^^^

I'm not really sure what goes on with the index, but if I had to guess---perfectly permissible since Nuala is also guessing---I'd say that WBM tampering with and 're-indexing' the captures on this specific date over the last couple of weeks has caused it to go haywire.

What is not at issue, the thing that has not changed since this whole thing started is the embedded coding. If you dig around Steve Marsden's posts at FB you can find his downloaded coding for the original April 30 page that ignited this controversy. At the moment I cannot find it, but within that coding, under the 'Next/Previous Capture' heading you will find this text "You are Here: 11:58:03 April 30, 2007".

Now look at the caps I made of the same codes embedded in the pages that remain after the great re-shuffling. Both for the CEOP homepage and for mccann.html, April 30, 2007 is sitting right where you would expect to find it if the capture is true and correct. It is indeed the NEXT homepage capture after April 27 and the PREVIOUS capture to May 13. As for mccann.html, we find April 30, 2007 as the capture PREVIOUS to the extant May 14 capture.

If the April 30 capture is out of place in the contiguous sequences of captures you would expect to find evidence of this in the coding. We do not.

@Joss--"Can you definitively prove that assertion?"

Of course I can. The above post was made on Tuesday July 7. Anyone can go have a look at the present  coding for themselves and see that the April 30 capture date has been eradicated from all contiguous sequences in the coding.

@Joss Today at 1:38 pm
I think it is misleading to assert that WBM is unreliable in its use for electronic evidence in court cases as this is not what WBM was designed for and they stipulate as much:

Had to respond to this Joss.

Comments from the IA to the effect of - 'this is not what we are really designed for but if you want to use us for that then go ahead and here's how we can help' is what's confusing/misleading. The IA will not guarantee content is concurrent with the page date stamp or that the page is an accurate portrayal of the page as it appeared on that date. They don't seem to encourage legal use BUT they have clearly been prepared to supply verified (by their staff) page copies and will supply legally verified copies if you pay.

When an archived page is retrieved from the IA the date stamp may apply to everything on that page; only the body of the page (always); most of the page. Items/files, such as images, on the page may have different date stamps right through to the current date. That is normal. The problem has always been that although most of the page elements can be dated accurately via their momentos (date codes) some items have some of these codes missing and the page content capture date is unclear. This has always been the case and there is good research on it. So what you see isn't always what you think you're seeing. But pages (and page content) on the WBM could up to now, usually be checked for dates to corroborate an argument in a court case.

HOWEVER, if we now accept that the date stamp of both the page body and/or individual files (e.g. the madeleine_02.jpg photo) can be incorrect, even if it is a 1 in a million chance (who knows) then the whole business of using anything from the IA as evidence in a court of law is kaput and the IA need to make that clear. And yes, I do think it's fair to highlight the IA's apparent newly discovered unreliability in this respect because, despite their professed reluctance, they do clearly have a procedure in place for supplying pages to the legal profession. I would expect them now, in light of what has just occured, to draw attention to the fact that there are possible date stamp errors in their archives, on the legal advice page - I would think that would put a stop to all requests for pages as evidence and I doubt that any court, anywhere, will be willing to accept IA pages as valid! 

whodunit wrote:

whodunit wrote:

whodunit wrote:CEOP homepage capture April 27, 2007

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

mccann.html capture dated May 13, 2007

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

CEOP homepage capture May 14, 2007.^^^^

I'm not really sure what goes on with the index, but if I had to guess---perfectly permissible since Nuala is also guessing---I'd say that WBM tampering with and 're-indexing' the captures on this specific date over the last couple of weeks has caused it to go haywire.

What is not at issue, the thing that has not changed since this whole thing started is the embedded coding. If you dig around Steve Marsden's posts at FB you can find his downloaded coding for the original April 30 page that ignited this controversy. At the moment I cannot find it, but within that coding, under the 'Next/Previous Capture' heading you will find this text "You are Here: 11:58:03 April 30, 2007".

Now look at the caps I made of the same codes embedded in the pages that remain after the great re-shuffling. Both for the CEOP homepage and for mccann.html, April 30, 2007 is sitting right where you would expect to find it if the capture is true and correct. It is indeed the NEXT homepage capture after April 27 and the PREVIOUS capture to May 13. As for mccann.html, we find April 30, 2007 as the capture PREVIOUS to the extant May 14 capture.

If the April 30 capture is out of place in the contiguous sequences of captures you would expect to find evidence of this in the coding. We do not.

@Joss--"Can you definitively prove that assertion?"

Of course I can. The above post was made on Tuesday July 7. Anyone can go have a look at the present  coding for themselves and see that the April 30 capture date has been eradicated from all contiguous sequences in the coding.

I think unless anyone knows 100% exactly how WBM works without any question of doubt whatsoever, then i don't think we can really assert anything with absolute positivity IMO. And if we knew exactly why this discrepency with a date in the archive pertaining to CEOP we wouldn't have all the different theories & opinions floating around at the moment for the last 100+ pages on this topic. Throwing around accusations at WBM staff of tampering with evidence in a criminal case is not the way to go as i see it. WBM claim an error, how are we going to prove otherwise when we don't have the complete picture of all of the information?

skyrocket wrote:@Joss Today at 1:38 pm
I think it is misleading to assert that WBM is unreliable in its use for electronic evidence in court cases as this is not what WBM was designed for and they stipulate as much:

Had to respond to this Joss.

Comments from the IA to the effect of - 'this is not what we are really designed for but if you want to use us for that then go ahead and here's how we can help' is what's confusing/misleading. The IA will not guarantee content is concurrent with the page date stamp or that the page is an accurate portrayal of the page as it appeared on that date. They don't seem to encourage legal use BUT they have clearly been prepared to supply verified (by their staff) page copies and will supply legally verified copies if you pay.

When an archived page is retrieved from the IA the date stamp may apply to everything on that page; only the body of the page (always); most of the page. Items/files, such as images, on the page may have different date stamps right through to the current date. That is normal. The problem has always been that although most of the page elements can be dated accurately via their momentos (date codes) some items have some of these codes missing and the page content capture date is unclear. This has always been the case and there is good research on it. So what you see isn't always what you think you're seeing. But pages (and page content) on the WBM could up to now, usually be checked for dates to corroborate an argument in a court case.

HOWEVER, if we now accept that the date stamp of both the page body and/or individual files (e.g. the madeleine_02.jpg photo) can be incorrect, even if it is a 1 in a million chance (who knows) then the whole business of using anything from the IA as evidence in a court of law is kaput and the IA need to make that clear. And yes, I do think it's fair to highlight the IA's apparent newly discovered unreliability in this respect because, despite their professed reluctance, they do clearly have a procedure in place for supplying pages to the legal profession. I would expect them now, in light of what has just occured, to draw attention to the fact that there are possible date stamp errors in their archives, on the legal advice page - I would think that would put a stop to all requests for pages as evidence and I doubt that any court, anywhere, will be willing to accept IA pages as valid! 

BBM, I think if you have a read on their legal faq's they are not in the business of proving legalities in cases involving law and are adverse to doing so. They also state they will fight being subpoenaed to court. They are quite limited in staff & resources. They provide a free public service.
They might comply with an affadavit concerning information, but at the end of the day it is not their job to prove a case or any information pertaining to it. I don't know why people don't understand their disclaimers and terms of service, it has been posted on the threads? They also have an email address to contact them on.

Hi Joss

I agree with you completely - the archive was set up as a research tool and it does an invaluable job in that respect, where 100% accuracy is not essential.

But, as I pointed out, the IA do have a legal advice page and although they don't encourage it they DO have procedures in place. If the date stamps can now not be relied on then the IA should make this clear, they have a very clear duty to do so. It is a critical point - it is not just a case of the onous being on individuals/lawyers to check page content dates carefully, the fact is dates could be incorrect and showing a false history, which wasn't the known case prior to 17 June 2015 (unless the IA have been very naughty and have been concealing previous problems). And, the fact that we are here discussing what we have all been discussing is a clear indicator of the implications of such date 'errors'.

If the trawl dates can't be relied on (and apparently they can't) then the IA need to say so - they should either stop supplying endorsed page copies altogether or they need to be crystal clear that errors in the date stamps can occur. 

Does still seem odd that in all the history of the WBM and the IA, the first time such an error has occured has been with a web page relating to the mccanns. Whats the chances?! Because surely, had any errors like this occured before the IA would have behaved responsibly and stopped dead the use of their pages in court, wouldn't they? That's the question! If we trust the IA, then the 30 April looks very odd, if we don't and all this has happened before, then it may not be odd at all.

skyrocket wrote:Hi Joss

I agree with you completely - the archive was set up as a research tool and it does an invaluable job in that respect, where 100% accuracy is not essential.

But, as I pointed out, the IA do have a legal advice page and although they don't encourage it they DO have procedures in place. If the date stamps can now not be relied on then the IA should make this clear, they have a very clear duty to do so. It is a critical point - it is not just a case of the onous being on individuals/lawyers to check page content dates carefully, the fact is dates could be incorrect and showing a false history, which wasn't the known case prior to 17 June 2015 (unless the IA have been very naughty and have been concealing previous problems). And, the fact that we are here discussing what we have all been discussing is a clear indicator of the implications of such date 'errors'.

If the trawl dates can't be relied on (and apparently they can't) then the IA need to say so - they should either stop supplying endorsed page copies altogether or they need to be crystal clear that errors in the date stamps can occur. 

Does still seem odd that in all the history of the WBM and the IA, the first time such an error has occured has been with a web page relating to the mccanns. Whats the chances?! Because surely, had any errors like this occured before the IA would have behaved responsibly and stopped dead the use of their pages in court, wouldn't they? That's the question! If we trust the IA, then the 30 April looks very odd, if we don't and all this has happened before, then it may not be odd at all.

Another problem for them is, in case they continue to provide expert legal evidence, if they didn't know after all these years the date could be wrong, what else don't they know that can be wrong?

Firstly, I wish to apologise to @HPK for my unwarranted comments last night.  There was no need for my snark response at all and I hope that he will forgive me as my apology is sincerely meant :)

Secondly, @TonyBennett, it is funny that you should mention Al Gore as you will find this rather serendipitous I'm sure :) :-

Fred Cohen CEO – Fred Cohen & Associates
President – California Sciences Institute and owner of the http.all.net/ domain found an image of Al Gore accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in 2001 on a Wayback Machine archive of one of his 1997 pages.

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Thirdly, Wayback did tell us the 30th April Calendar blue dots would disappear after they next re-indexed

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After much discussion, we seem to be in general agreement that an error has occurred, we are not going to get to the bottom of it without IA’s help however that does not seem to be forthcoming.
 
So let’s look at what they have said; Chris Butler has confirmed the timestamps from the two records that were highlighted to him are incorrect which were:-
 
20070430115803               [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
20070430115803               [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
 
He then states the mccann.html appears to be July 31 2007 & ceop.gov.uk October 7 2007
 
They may have initially thought that they APPEAR to be these dates but how come?
 
mccann.html :- from the information we have available the next crawl of this file was 20070513020901 (13/05/07) and there were also seven other crawls prior to his stated 31/07/07  date. If we then look at his proposed date there were no crawls of the ceop site that day (the last recorded crawl was on 27/07 for some reason  however 689 urls were recorded that month, some may have been removed though). 

IA could have just have said that 13/05/07 was the capture date it actually would have made much more sense, however he does have to tie it in to the 'campaign' posters. The first date where mccann.html, madeleine 01 & 02 jpg's and the find Madeleine posters appear is 08/07/07 it seems odd to me he is claiming 31/07, what about all the previously captured mccann.html pages? Just as an aside the 'Madeleine McCann campaign posters‘, campaign! really strange terminology (probably been mentioned before).
 
Ceop.gov.uk:- the 07/10/07 date he states does show in the records. The issue with that being correct would appear to be a link to a news article dated 23/10/07, given that the WBM can replay with this type of ‘issue‘ as stated in the FAQs it brings us back to a similar argument.
 
I don’t buy IA’s (lack of) explanation,  the 20070430115803 timestamp came from an actual capture date / time imo what it actually captured, we are destined not to know

HKP wrote:After much discussion, we seem to be in general agreement that an error has occurred

I'm back.

It seems sense has prevailed.

Hallelujah

BlueBag wrote:

HKP wrote:After much discussion, we seem to be in general agreement that an error has occurred

I'm back.

It seems sense has prevailed.

Hallelujah

Not quite, since you've been gone (there's a song in there somewhere) nobody has been able to prove that mccann.html wasn't captured 20070430115803. Welcome back.

HKP wrote:

BlueBag wrote:

HKP wrote:After much discussion, we seem to be in general agreement that an error has occurred

I'm back.

It seems sense has prevailed.

Hallelujah

Not quite, since you've been gone (there's a song in there somewhere) nobody has been able to prove that mccann.html wasn't captured 20070430115803. Welcome back.

Yeah but... you know.

HKP wrote:

BlueBag wrote:

HKP wrote:After much discussion, we seem to be in general agreement that an error has occurred

I'm back.

It seems sense has prevailed.

Hallelujah

Not quite, since you've been gone (there's a song in there somewhere) nobody has been able to prove that mccann.html wasn't captured 20070430115803. Welcome back.

We  also have the correspondence between Chris Butler and Isabelle McFadden and the findings of Dr Martin Roberts to consider.

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HKP wrote: "After much discussion, we seem to be in general agreement that an error has occurred."

I do not agree. After much discussion, some are in general agreement that an error occurred. Others--the majority, I'd wager--remain unconvinced. Erasing the record, altering evidence of an 'error' without ever advising the public and explaining their actions  is a sinister act by an ostensibly unbiased archive. Just think of these actions in any other context, like recalling a book and erasing certain passages and expecting people to believe those words had never existed....

whodunit wrote:HKP wrote: "After much discussion, we seem to be in general agreement that an error has occurred."

I do not agree. After much discussion, some are in general agreement that an error occurred. Others--the majority, I'd wager--remain unconvinced. Erasing the record, altering evidence of an 'error' without ever advising the public and explaining their actions  is a sinister act by an ostensibly unbiased archive. Just think of these actions in any other context, like recalling a book and erasing certain passages and expecting people to believe those words had never existed....

I respect your opinion and position on this, having seen and analysed as much data as I could my own conclusions are that a crawl was made on 20070430115803 then at some point in the future other URLs found there way into this index (maybe even as part of the 'super crawl' that was conducted over many months).

 As another example of this probably happening I'll use the 'vacancies' captured 30/04. Out of the 14 captured 7 of them (very specific titles) first / next appear as a block on 23/10/07 another 5 are spread in 2 days of July. It appears to me (using 'appears' same as Chris Butler) that URLs have found their way back to 30/04 somehow but there had to be an index on that date/time for them to find ie the index was not created after the 20070430115803 timestamp. This particular date (30/04) has a trend of being used as a crawl date (2006, 2007, 2008) and I think it's genuine. 

What I would contest is what was originally captured, I think there's enough circumstantial evidence to point to mccann.html having been 'caught' including the previous / next source data and lack of repetitions etc. We should also consider one other site that we know that has over 16000 captures for the same timestamp, again I believe a capture would have been made 20070430115803.

Apologies to those who took umbrage at my 'we' statement I didn't really intend to speak for all.

If I was an attorney looking for work, I would start a class action and have all decisions overthrown that base their conclusion (in part) on data from the wayback machine.

Juulcy wrote:If I was an attorney looking for work, I would start a class action and have all decisions overthrown that base their conclusion (in part) on data from the wayback machine.

I don't disagree Juuicy who knows the accuracy of the data we all downloaded as it took some time to figure out how. We should consider that the codexgeo site also suffered the same fate with this particular timestamp (there may be others we don't know about). Only IA will have the absolute data and it is highly unlikely that much more information will come from them. 

If we completely put aside the data found then we are back to the basic argument of mccann.html & ceop page (with October news article mentioned) being found on 30/04 and all that this entails.

IA are/were obviously proud of their system, Chris Butler's last line of the e-mail was they receive many weekly requests from attorneys for authenticated records. Wonder how that's panning out lately?

Juulcy wrote:If I was an attorney looking for work, I would start a class action and have all decisions overthrown that base their conclusion (in part) on data from the wayback machine.

Yep, and they would make a lot of money.