Link Rot – When A Hyperlink Festers and Rots.

24 Thursday Sep 2015

Posted by Celia C. Elwell, RP in Citations, Legal Technology, Legal Writing, Link Rot

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Jonathan Zittrain, Legal Citations, Legal Rebels Blog, Link Rot, Perma CC, Tom Majors, Victor Li

Jonathan Zittrain: Fighting ‘Link Rot’ In Court Opinions and Legal Scholarship, by Victor Li, Legal Rebels Blog (with hat tip to Tom Majors!)

http://tinyurl.com/nfrr7gm

Link rot is real. It creates havoc in court opinions that include hyperlinks. Perma.cc, unfortunately, is not the magic bullet for link rot. I have tried using it for links to this blog, only to find later that the link no longer works. Perma.cc is sorry about that, but does not have a real answer for that problem. Use it with caution. -CCE

Sure, it’s annoying when you click on a link and get that ‘404’ message or an automatic redirect to the homepage. But when it comes to legal research, dead links aren’t just annoying; they can undermine the entire premise of an opinion, article or treatise. . . .

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The 20th Edition of the Bluebook Has Finally Arrived.

30 Saturday May 2015

Posted by Celia C. Elwell, RP in Citations, Legal Writing, Link Rot, The Bluebook

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Barco 2.0: Law Library Reference, Perma CC, The Bluebook, University of Pittsburg, William P. Statsky

The Bluebook!, by Barco 2.0: Law Library Reference, University of Pittsburg (with hat tip to William P. Statsky)

http://tinyurl.com/qgxnokh

The approximate cost for the 20^th Edition is around $30. If you buy it online to get the free month of the Bluebook Online, it will cost $38.50: https://www.legalbluebook.com/Purchase/Products.aspx?op=Book.

You will find the changes made to the 20^th Edition at the beginning of the book. Each new edition provides this information to allow you to see up front to show what has been revised and added to the book.

I am glad to see that this Edition of the Bluebook is addressing the problem of link rot by using Perma.cc. I’ve blogged previously about Perma.cc. I used it exclusively on this blog for a time until more than one posts were lost because the link no longer worked. Perma.cc is still the best tool available now to address link rot. Let’s hope that it works out its reliability problems. -CCE

The 20th Edition of The Bluebook is now available. For this edition, when you purchase a printed copy of The Bluebook, you will get a FREE 30 day trial to the Bluebook Online; look for your free trial key on the back of the title page. The Bluebook for iPad, iPhone and iPad Touch are available via the Rulebook app in the App Store. Perma.cc is pleased to see that this Bluebook now recognizes Perma.cc as a reliable tool for preserving internet sources. . . .

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More on Link Rot.

27 Sunday Apr 2014

Posted by Celia C. Elwell, RP in Appellate Law, Legal Technology, Link Rot, United States Supreme Court

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All Tech Considered, Citations, Legal Writing, Link Rot, NPR, Perma CC, U.S. Supreme Court, URL

Stopping Link Rot: Aiming to End A Virtual Epidemic, by NPR Staff, All Tech Considered, NPR

http://n.pr/QTrCGp

I have mentioned perma.cc and the problem of link rot before. It is a good solution but not quite perfected. When I have used it here on this blog, it is not always reliable, which is disappointing for something that shows such promise. Hopefully all the kinks will be worked out soon. -CCE

Just about anyone who’s gone online has encountered the message: ‘Error 404’ or page ‘Not Found.’ It’s what you see when a link is broken or dead — when the resource is no longer available.

It happens all across the Internet, on blogs, news websites, even links cited in decisions by the Supreme Court. It’s called link rot, and it spreads over time as more pages die.

These are natural deaths; links die when the server where the page first lived has closed for business, or a filter is blocking access. It’s annoying on sites like Buzzfeed and Gawker, but it’s worse when links go rotten on judicial decisions or works of scholarship.

Jonathan Zittrain, professor of law and computer science at Harvard University, says that’s a serious problem.

‘It’s extraordinarily bad for the long-term maintenance of the information we need, say, to understand the law,’ says Zittrain, who helped create Perma.cc, a service to help judges, authors and scholars preserve links indefinitely. . . .