
Aren't you glad you didn't cite this webpage? - hdevalence
http://ssnat.com/
======
3JPLW
Here's a good link for context - a NYT article from September 23, "In Supreme
Court Opinions, Web Links to Nowhere:"
[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/24/us/politics/in-supreme-
cou...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/24/us/politics/in-supreme-court-
opinions-clicks-that-lead-nowhere.html)

From the first two paragraphs: "Supreme Court opinions have come down with a
bad case of link rot. According to a new study[1], 49 percent of the
hyperlinks in Supreme Court decisions no longer work.

This can sometimes be amusing. A link in a 2011 Supreme Court opinion[2] about
violent video games by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. now leads to a mischievous
error message[3]."

1\.
[http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/futureoftheinternet/2013/09/22/...](http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/futureoftheinternet/2013/09/22/perma/)

2\.
[http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/08-1448.ZC.html](http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/08-1448.ZC.html)

3\. [http://ssnat.com/](http://ssnat.com/)

~~~
pinko
I love the new, "And if you quoted this in the NY Times, will you do a
correction for the now changed text?" line. That wasn't there when the NYT
story broke, obviously. Very clever.

------
jaysonelliot
I publish a print magazine. Up to this point, we've avoided printing URLs in
the magazine, because our printed issues may last longer than the links will
stay live.

To solve the problem, we're launching our own link shortener this month, and
printing our own shortened links in the magazine. That way we can control what
happens when link rot sets in, whether redirecting or caching content on our
own servers if necessary (and allowed by copyright).

The side benefit is that all our printed links can be easy to read and type,
an important usability concern when dealing with print. A little self-
referential branding on the shortener doesn't hurt, either.

~~~
dublinben
I suggest you take a look at the perma.cc initative. There's no reason to
reinvent the robust shortlink, and you won't be obligated to run this system
forever.

~~~
j_s
Perma.cc appears to be targeted at links in published journals:

 _After the paper has been submitted to a journal, the journal staff checks
that the provided Perma.cc link actually represents the cited material. If it
does, the staff “vests” the link and it is forever preserved. Links that are
not “vested” will be preserved for two years, at which point the author will
have the option to renew the link for another two years._

~~~
dublinben
I'm sure they'll be willing to work with other publishers as well. From
talking to the project manager, they don't seem to have any goal of
restricting this to academic publications.

------
valtron
[http://web.archive.org/web/20110414214749/http://ssnat.com/](http://web.archive.org/web/20110414214749/http://ssnat.com/)

~~~
alanh
I get an empty download file… is that expected? (Must be a Wayback Machine
glitch, maybe caused by the surge of popularity, I figure. It was supposed to
have content about school shooters)

~~~
pcrh
In case anyone else is wondering what this is:

[http://pastebin.com/weQzr4Kp](http://pastebin.com/weQzr4Kp)

------
bcoates
I'm more worried that the Justice Alito is apparently unaware of the
phenomenon of vaporware:

    
    
      There are games in which a player can take on the
      identity and reenact the killings carried out by
      the perpetrators of the murders at Columbine High
      School and Virginia Tech.
    

But both the news article and the now defunct website he cites clearly state
that the game _doesn 't_ exist.

[http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/04/20/school-shooter-video-
gam...](http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/04/20/school-shooter-video-game-
reenacts-columbine-virginia-tech-killings/)

~~~
ctdonath
There _was_ at least one (probably more) paltry DOOM map mods depicting
Columbine High School. Not finished products, very poorly done, but enough to
fulfill Alito's claim.

In the spirit of the reference, there was a high-quality simulation of the JFK
assassination, with the user acting as Oswald. Made a big splash of outrage in
the news and was soon pulled (the contest to reenact "the shot" didn't help).
It's still available if you look.

BUT...keep in mind endless movies & books depicting gratuitous violence. Alito
hasn't articulated a difference on "freedom of speech" grounds.

~~~
VMG
One of the columbine shooters himself has made custom Doom maps:
[http://doom.wikia.com/wiki/Columbine_High_School_massacre](http://doom.wikia.com/wiki/Columbine_High_School_massacre)

------
rayiner
For people positing hypothetical solutions to this problem, consider this
exercise. Look at this case:
[http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=1254092943969513...](http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=12540929439695130589&q=175+U.S.+211&hl=en&as_sdt=2,39).
This is a Supreme Court case from 1899. There is a citation to a Sixth Circuit
case on page 238 (after "'reserved' cities") that has disappeared in the
Google Scholar copy, but appears in Westlaw as: 54 U.S. App. 723, 85 Fed. Rep.
271, 29 C.C.A. 141, 46 L.R.A. 122. Westlaw still happily pulls up this 114
year-old citation to the Federal Reporter. That's the sort of time scale legal
documents need to operate on. I'm not really convinced anything on the
internet as we know it today can offer permanence comparable to printing out a
bunch of copies and shipping them around the country.

------
afandian
The industry standard for citations between scholarly publications is
CrossRef, which is the official DOI link registration agency for scholarly and
professional publications. I don't know what the original document said, but
if it was a scholarly publication, the citation should/could have been done by
DOI. DOIs resolve to URLs, but publishers have a mandate to keep them up-to-
date.

[http://crossref.org](http://crossref.org)
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_object_identifier](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_object_identifier)
[http://www.doi.org/](http://www.doi.org/)

(I work for CrossRef)

~~~
edsu
The trouble is, what is "scholarly" is a blurred line at best.

------
coldpie
So, what's the solution, here? It seems reasonable for a court opinion to
include a copy of the source, if possible. What about for something like a
YouTube video, which could disappear at any time, but can't be represented on
paper? How would you agree on a digital format for representing a supreme
court opinion?

~~~
martindale
Build awareness of the importance of the permanence of URIs and what they mean
to Hypertext. The only full solution is a cultural one, not a technological
one.

~~~
jerf
Culture isn't going to encourage people to host websites they're no longer
interested in, where by "host websites" read "pay money for".

The only solution is some form of legalized archiving. We need the right to
copy for archiving without profit, or something. Not sketching out a full,
legal solution here, just pointing out that it has to include some form of
right-to-archive.

~~~
jaggederest
That exists. Fair use covers non-profit educational uses, such as the awesome
Internet Archive:

[http://archive.org/](http://archive.org/)

~~~
InclinedPlane
Archive.org, as cool as it is, does not archive the entirety of the internet.
Moreover, it's a bit silly to posit that one website that we can surely rely
on to exist always! is the solution to the fact that you can never rely on the
existence of any particular website in the future.

~~~
jaggederest
No, I'm not saying that "the internet archive completely solves this problem",
what I'm saying is "there exists no legal barrier to making something like
this a reality, since things like the internet archive already exist".

------
martindale
Now's as good a time as any to refer to Timothy Berners-Lee's 1998 essay,
"Cool URIs don't change":
[http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI.html](http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI.html)

------
raykay
That's a 200 disguised as a 404. Shame!

~~~
gavinpc
What's more, this 404 page (real or feigned) requires jQuery. Now _that 's_
penetration.

------
ademarre
The point "about the transience of linked information" has been made. But the
problem isn't new to anyone, including NYT. It should pointed out that Justice
Alito included a date with the URL, which allows the URL to function as a
citation even after the content changes. It's no different than citing an
unpublished source.

~~~
frossie
In fact the actual court decision quoted has everything you would want to know
about what was on the web page:

14 Webley, “School Shooter” Video Game to Reenact Columbine, Virginia Tech
Killings, Time (Apr. 20, 2011),
[http://newsfeed.time.com/2011](http://newsfeed.time.com/2011) / 04 / 20 /
school - shooter - video - game - reenacts-columbine-virginia-tech-killings.
After a Web site that made School Shooter available for download removed it in
response to mounting criticism, the developer stated that it may make the game
available on its own Web site. Inside the Sick Site of a School Shooter Mod
(Mar. 26, 2011), [http://ssnat.com](http://ssnat.com).

------
geuis
Sorry, but I don't know the context of this story. Can someone explain?

~~~
avree
Here's the NYT article it vaguely references. Lot more content, plus an
explanation. [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/24/us/politics/in-supreme-
cou...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/24/us/politics/in-supreme-court-
opinions-clicks-that-lead-nowhere.html?_r=0)

It's basically highlighting how there's a lot of linkrot, which makes re-
reading old Supreme Court decisions difficult.

------
rayiner
This is an interesting demonstration of the dangers of mutability in the
presence of shared state.

~~~
rogerallen
:^)
[http://www.flickr.com/photos/paulbarry/2613013337/](http://www.flickr.com/photos/paulbarry/2613013337/)

------
moocowduckquack
Unfortunately the solution has been in vapourware hell since 1960 -
[http://xanadu.com/](http://xanadu.com/)

------
yeukhon
Wow. There is a whole point why we were taught not to trust a web site in
general. Printed materials usually last longer. I am so thankful to learn
about this case tonight. Thanks!

------
Inetgate
I wonder why this 404 page returns http 200 status code.

------
sbierwagen
Been a solved problem for a while:
[http://webcitation.org/](http://webcitation.org/)

------
shocks
I think this when I see journals (looking at you New Scientist...) use link
shorteners like bit.ly.

What are they thinking? ;/

------
thrush
found the original page!

[http://web.archive.org/web/20110414214749/http://ssnat.com/](http://web.archive.org/web/20110414214749/http://ssnat.com/)

------
triplesec
All I can say is: Epic Troll! Brilliant.

------
FridayWithJohn
Had to use the good old "Wayback machine" to see what was originally on that
site that warranted some citing in court case. Looks like it was all about the
school shootings. here's the link:
[http://bit.ly/1bF1kB4](http://bit.ly/1bF1kB4)

~~~
thrush
I think HN recommends not using link shorteners. It's nice to know that people
aren't tracking your clicks.

~~~
FridayWithJohn
oh, thanks. Didn't know that. Won't do it in the future :-)

