Suzanne Shell is testing the stupidity of our courts by suing the Internet Archives for spidering her site. At the bottom of her site there is a statement that reads, "If you copy or distribute anything on this website, you are entering into a contract." Since there's a law that says computers can enter into a contract on behalf of a person, she feels she's in the right here.

But wait, there's more! Raise your hand if you're ever heard of robots.txt. Anyone? Anyone? Robots.txt, in a nutshell, tells spidering applications such as search engines or, say, the internet archive, what they can and cannot look at. There is, you see, a mechanism in place for preventing unwanted spidering. All she had to do was post an electronic sign. But did she? Nope.

Something about this smells of a person with entirely too much time on her hands who took that time to find a law she could exploit, posted a notice, and waited for the trap to be sprung. Term: entrapment.

The article I linked above talks about the implications of this case if the courts find in favor of the plaintiff. I, for one, don't know what to think. On the one hand, we could be opening the door for a lot of anti-spam lawsuits and cleaner results on search engines. On the other hand, wave goodbye to the last free source of information.