But it's now being sued by a Colorado woman under the RICO Act (Racketeering Influence and Corrupt Organizations act) more usually reserved for the likes of the Mafia or the Big 4 music cartel's RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America).

Suzanne Shell is going after the archive for, "conversion, civil theft, breach of contract, and violations" of RICO and the Colorado Organized Crime Control Act, says Information Week.

"In December 2005, Shell requested that Internet Archive remove her www.profane-justice.org site from its database, with which request Internet Archive complied," says Martin Samson on the Phillips Nizer site, going on:

Shell subsequently demanded a payment of $100,000 for plaintiff's unauthorized copying. In response, plaintiff commenced this lawsuit, seeking a declaratory judgment that its activities did not infringe Shell's copyright. Shell, proceeding pro se, counterclaimed, asserting that Internet Archive's copying of her site gave rise to claims of copyright infringement, conversion, civil theft and RICO. Shell also asserted that the Internet Archive's activities breached the contract formed between the parties as a result of plaintiff's act of copying portions of defendant's site, which act purportedly constituted an acceptance of the site's terms and conditions of use.

Shell's site, profane-justice.org/, states, "IF YOU COPY OR DISTRIBUTE ANYTHING ON THIS WEB SITE, YOU ARE ENTERING INTO A CONTRACT," at the bottom of the main page, and refers readers to a more detailed copyright notice and agreement".

"Her suit asserts that the Internet Archive's programmatic visitation of her site constitutes acceptance of her terms, despite the obvious inability of a Web crawler to understand those terms and the absence of a robots.txt file to warn crawlers away," says Information Week..

The case reached the US District Court of Colorado, "and in an order from Feb. 13, 2007 the court dismissed most of Shell's claims, except for the breach of contract cause of action" says The Center for Internet and Society (CIS) at Stanford Law School.

It says the court held:

[W]hile Internet Archive states that no human being from Internet Archive actually knew of the terms of use of Shell's website, Shell has alleged that Internet Archive expressly entered into a contract with Shell through her Copyright Notice, and that Internet Archive "possesses the capacity and authority to enter into contracts." Shell does not have to allege in her complaint every fact necessary to prove breach of contract ... While Internet Archive may be correct that the absence of human consent to this contract dooms Shell's claims, Shell has not had the opportunity to develop a factual record on this point. Shell has alleged the existence of a contract, breach and damages, which is sufficient to make out a claim for breach of contract.

"So," adds the CIS post, "litigation will continue and the Internet Archive might have to convince the court that a contract was not formed, is unconscionable or otherwise not binding. Should be interesting to follow. If the court upholds this contract (chances are greater than zero...) thousands of sites' operators will find incentive to do the same as Shell did.

"At stake is the future of the Internet Archive and the past of the Internet. Hope the court will see it this way too."

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