RECAP Documents Now More Searchable Via Internet Archive

We recently made a small change to the way that documents uploaded by RECAP users are made available on the Internet Archive. Until today, the Internet Archive had served primarily as a bulk hosting provider, without much ability to browse or search the archive. This was enforced in two ways: First, it was not possible to search for documents using the Internet Archive's search tools. Second, external search engines were prevented from indexing the site. We decided to do this in order to be especially cautious with respect to privacy concerns that we have previously discussed .

Since we launched, we have spent a great deal of time examining these issues, and we decided to make a small incremental step in making the documents more findable without (yet) allowing in-depth full-text search of all documents. We have enabled Internet Archive indexing, as well as search engine indexing, for the case summary pages on the Internet Archive. That means, for example, that the relatively limited information on the AT&T v. Hepting case summary page is now searchable.

You can find this case through the Internet Archive search engine by doing a query like this: http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=collection:usfederalcourts AND hepting

You can find this case through a Google query like this: http://www.google.com/#&q=site:archive.org usfederalcourts hepting

As we continue to gain a better understanding of the privacy issues at stake, we will likely make further improvements to this system. We welcome your feedback.