Originally Posted by Millennium
If I needed to preserve a Web page to use as evidence in court, what would be the best way of going about it? I've thought of printing and saving PDFs (and I've done these), but I understand that these probably won't be considered very strong evidence.
I'm not sure who told you this, but from what I remember from my Evidence class last year, a printout would be considered admissible evidence (at least under the Federal Rule of Evidence 1001).
If you want to read more about this here is a link to a DOJ article that discusses the admissibilty of documents stored on computers:
http://www.usdoj.gov/criminal/cyberc...arch2001_4.htm
The executive summary is:
1. You would need to authenticate the document - ie testify that you printed it out
2. Unless the other side can show actual evidence that you tampered w/ the data before you printed it out, the possibility of tampering or accusations of tampering do not affect the admissibility of the printouts.
Another possibility is that you could make a request for production for the website on the opposing party. That would force them to provide you w/ an authenticated, unaltered copy of their website. The copy that they produce should be admissible against them.
If you make a copy of the website and compare your copy to their copy, you can tell if they changed anything. If nothing is changed, just use the copy they gave you. If something is changed, then tell the judge you have reason to believe they may have tampered or destroyed evidence (VERY BAD).
Personally I'd talk to a real lawyer in your state to find out what the proper way of handling electronic documents is.
--ranga
[ Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer; this is not legal advice ]
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