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Volume XV, Issue I Is This Web Resource a Dog?by Randall E. Winn As the New Yorker cartoon goes: "On the internet, nobody knows you're a dog." The first step in using a website in legal research, and in justifying our trust in it to anyone else, is figuring out whether it is owned by a dog. It was easier in the old days (say, 1993) we used books, which were heavy, had expensive bindings, and named the publisher right up front. It wasn't worth the trouble for a hoaxer to publish such a volume and, when in doubt, it was easy to contact the publisher. The web changes everything. Anyone can publish an authentic-looking web page cheaply, and thousands do. Web pages of any quality include owner contact information, often in the form of an "About Us" link. However, this information can be vague or misleading ("the leading authority on web-based law"). A hoax page can even link to an authentic site's "About Us" page (for example, see "MS Linux" at http://www.mslinux.org/ - which may have been purged but is still available at http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:www.mslinux.org/+&hl=en.) Fortunately, we can use the web's "registrar" system to check website owner information. First, figure out the web page's "top level domain" (TLD) and the "domain name". To do this, ignore anything in the web page URL before the first one or two slashes, such as "http://". Then, before the next slash, notice that there are either two or three sets of characters separated by dots, e.g. yyy.zzz or xxx.yyy.zzz. Skip the xxx; it refers to a particular device within the domain. The "domain" is the yyy and the TLD is the zzz. For example, in www.wsba.org, the domain name is "wsba" and the TLD is "org". Now, if the TLD is "com", "edu" "net" or "org", then the registrar is Network Solutions, Inc. Simply point your browser to http://www.networksolutions.com/ and click on the "whois" link (currently in the upper right corner). This gives you a form into which you can type both the domain and TLD, e.g. wsba.org. Clicking on "Search" gives us a wealth of contact information from Network Solutions database. Usually (but not always) this matches the "About Us" page. Other TLDs are not so simple. "Gov" "Mil" and "Us" are controlled by the US Government. There is high confidence that the organizations using them such domains are the ones actually registered to use them. Then there are about two hundred other TLDs, each controlled by a particular national government. Each has its own system for registration. Some are marketing their domains to the U.S.; for example, Cormoros ("cc") is selling "cc" names and Tuvalu is selling ".tv" names. Their "whois" functions (at http://www.tv/ ) are currently good only for verifying whether you can buy a name from them, not telling you who owns one. Until this mess is cleared up, you may wish to rely on the more established TLDs. For more information, see the PTO's Examination Guide at http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/tac/notices/guide299.htm or a short course on "Information Quality" at http://www.virtualchase.com/govdoc/quality.html
Randall Winn may be reached at randyw@rewinn.com |