5 ms·

Have you figured out a way to verify what a page states as its creation date?

• PeterisP 8y ago
  Ignore the claimed creation date, and use the earliest date that you know for certain, i.e. the time you crawled it.
  • jacquesm 8y ago
    That only works if you happen to crawl the original first. Given that copies could be plentiful that's a losing game. Content creators signing their content with a private key would be a better idea.
    • icebraining 8y ago
      Content creators signing their content with a private key would be a better idea. How would that help? Wouldn't the copier simply sign with their own key? Maybe Google should run a timestamping service. It could be stateless: send an hash of the content, get it back timestamped and signed, then include it in the page before publishing it.
      • jacquesm 8y ago
        They could, but it would not be registered before the other one would be. - create signature - post signature, possibly publicly, (wow, maybe an actual use for a blockchain) - post content Anybody copying it could be proven to be a copyist.
        • icebraining 8y ago
          Right, you'd need something like the blockchain - ie, a timestamping server - to validate the posting date. But then you don't need a signature, just a hash. The advantage of using Google's timestamping service is that it wouldn't need to store the hash/signature, unlike the blockchain.
          • Boulth 8y ago
            No, you don't need blockchain for that, just a good old RFC 3161 timestamping server, most big CAs run one and timestamp stuff for free. Actually secure timestamping is already used by Windows to verify software signatures, even when the signing key expires: https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/47289/how-is-an-authenticode-timestamp-verified https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/47289/how-is-an... Heck, you can even use Roughtime [0] to achieve secure timestamping as it uses digital signatures and allows you to provide a nonce. Even the design doc [1] mentions this use case: > This means that Roughtime replies can be used as a time-stamping service, and thus that Roughtime servers can be used to check each other. [0]: https://blog.cloudflare.com/roughtime/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/roughtime/ [1]: https://roughtime.googlesource.com/roughtime https://roughtime.googlesource.com/roughtime
            • deleted 8y ago
              [deleted]
        • JetSpiegel 8y ago
          - Change "a" to "а", hash changed - ... - Profit?
          • icebraining 8y ago
            The hash is just to identify the individual article, so it can be timestamped. Google would still use its existing algorithms to decide if the two articles are copies or not.
          • Natanael_L 8y ago
            The publication of the hash proves who came first (to the timestamping service). Content comparison can be done by other means than the hash.
  • IncRnd 8y ago
    How could that possibly solve the problem of determining exact creation dates?
• jobigoud 8y ago
  Not sure why you are being downvoted. If we can't do it manually we can't automate it.
• peteboyd 8y ago
  Inside Webmaster Tools is “Fetch” tool. It allows you to submit any page to Google. You can then also have Google index the page. When you fetch a time stamp is recorded and a full HTML copy of the page too. I am not sure if Google uses this to prove which is the original copy. Most website owners don’t know this exists. So it’s hard to use it as proof of the original, because the original creator may not even use the tool. However, if everyone started to submit key articles, then it theoretically could compare the two fetches and decide which is earlier. It could be automated too with sitemap uploads as you post content. Moreover, you could then use this as evidence in a DMCA take down that your copy is the earliest. Anyways, there are ways to prove earliest content.
  • comboy 8y ago
    You can prove in many ways that your content existed at a given time. But it seems quite impossible to prove that a copy of it didn't exist earlier somewhere else. edit: unless the content itself contains a proof like the latest block hash or something like that, but that could be edited
  • styfle 8y ago
    Yes, this appears to be the date google shows next to the search results. Every time I write a blog post, I submit manually via webmaster tools "Fetch as Google" so that it gets indexed immediately. That way, the date google shows matches the date I published the article.
  • IncRnd 8y ago
    That's my point. There is no way to verify the date assertion of an arbitrary page. The problem is akin to standing in a crowd where some people hold a sign with their age on it and others do not hold a sign, then trying to verify the age of an arbitrary people.
• timClicks 8y ago
  No, I haven't and in a sense I'm relieved. I've certainly thought about it a lot and am glad that people are smarter than me haven't figured it out.