via Slashdot:

Kailash Nadh writes “The Internet archive, which has been storing snapshots of millions of webpages since 1996 has been sued by the firm Harding Earley Follmer & Frailey, Philadelphia. The firm was defending Health Advocate, a company in suburban Philadelphia that helps patients resolve health care and insurance disputes, against a trademark action brought by a similarly named competitor. In preparing the case, representatives of 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.”

There is actually a correction to this original article:

“Internet archive … has been sued by the firm Harding Earley Follmer & Frailey.” Fingas was one of several readers (thanks to all!) to correct me on this, writing “According to the linked article that isn’t the case; instead they are being sued by Healthcare Advocates, represented by the firm McCarter & English. Further, the article says that Harding Earley Follmer & Frailey is actually being sued along with the Internet Archive..”

This is so ridiculous. Anyone can prevent their pages from being archived by using the ubiquitous robots.txt. In the event your administrator is too incompetent to know about robots.txt you can simply request to have your content removed.

The Internet Archive is an important part of our Internet history, we’re so fortunate to have such a place to see the evolution of probably the greatest communication tool ever invented. It’s a shame that sue happy jerks like Healthcare Advocates could jeopardize the future of such an important historical tool.

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