Edwards Campaign Conceals Internet History By Preventing Archiving Of JohnEdwards.com
July 11, 2007 | Permalink
If you’re not already familiar with it, the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine is a great Internet resource. Every few weeks, it backs up virtually every website on the Internet and offers everyone easy and free access to its archive. In the political arena, this is especially useful for voters as it enables them to see what a candidate was saying about a particular issue a few years ago in his/her own words, on his/her website (as opposed to being filtered through news stories). However, this resource could prove to be a political liability by giving voters as well as news outlets and bloggers access to a candidate’s website from a few years ago - creating yet another ghost from the past.
The good news for candidates, or anyone that doesn’t want their site archived, is that the automatic archiving of one’s website can be blocked by editing a file known as the “robots.txt” file; the bad news is that certain valuable information may never be collected if some or all utilize this feature.
Transparency in elected officials is not merely a virtue worth admiring, it’s a practical necessity for the proper functioning and stability of a democracy. Accordingly, I put the current field of presidential contenders to the test by checking to see if they currently allow their campaign websites to be archived. Fortunately, I was not able to locate any current major or minor candidates that block the archiving of their campaign website, with one exception: John Edwards.
A search through the Wayback Machine for John Edwards’ website, produces the following message:
Robots.txt Query Exclusion.
We’re sorry, access to http://www.johnedwards.com has been blocked by the site owner via robots.txt.
Further investigation led to the discovery of the robots.txt file and the line that was inserted to prevent archiving of JohnEdwards.com:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /archive
We find it odd and somewhat troubling that Edwards’ campaign would block such a useful resource. We’re unable to think of any legitimate reasons why someone running for public office, let alone president, would refuse to allow their campaign website to be stored for future reference. Given his previous statements regarding transparency and honesty in politics, our confusion is only compounded by the fact that it’s John Edwards who is refusing to allow his site to be archived.
Requests to Edwards’ campaign for information regarding this matter were not responded to; we’ll be sure to provide updates as they become available.
Related at 2008Central.net:
- Giuliani, Huckabee And Kucinich Advertise On Searches For Sam Brownback (6/3/07)
- Republicans Fight Google Adwords War (2/4/07)
[Photo Credit: Archive.org]
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