Wayback Machine The Wayback Machine is a digital time capsule created by the Internet Archive , a non - profit organization , based in San Francisco , California . It is maintained with content from Alexa Internet . The service enables users to see archived versions of web page s across time , which the Archive calls a " three dimensional index " . The name Wayback Machine is a reference to a segment from " The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show " in which Mr . Peabody and Sherman use a time machine called the " WABAC machine " ( pronounced " Wayback " ) to witness , participate in , and , more often than not , alter famous events in history . Origins , growth and storage . In 1996 , Brewster Kahle , with Bruce Gilliat , developed software to crawl and download all publicly accessible World Wide Web pages , the Gopher hierarchy , the Netnews bulletin board system , and downloadable software . The information collected by these " crawlers " does not collect all the information available on the Internet since much of the data is restricted by the publisher or stored in databases that are not accessible . These " crawlers " also respect the robots exclusion standard for websites wishing to opt - out of appearing in search results or being cached . To overcome inconsistencies in partially cached websites , Archive - It . org was developed in 2005 by the Internet Archive as a means of allowing institutions and content creators to voluntarily harvest and preserve collections of digital content , and create digital archives . Information was kept on digital tape for five years , with Kahle occasionally allowing researchers and scientists to tap into the clunky database . When the archive reached its five - year anniversary , it was unveiled and opened to the public in a ceremony at the University of California - Berkeley . Snapshots usually become available more than 6 months after they are archived , or in some cases , even later , 24 months or longer . The frequency of snapshots is variable , so not all tracked web site updates are recorded . Intervals of several weeks or years sometimes occur . After August 2008 sites had to be listed on the Open Directory in order to be included . According to Jeff Kaplan of the Internet Archive in November 2010 , other sites were still being archived , but more recent captures would only become visible after the next major indexing , an infrequent operation . In 2009 the Internet Archive migrated its customized storage architecture to Sun Open Storage , and hosts a new datacenter in a Sun Modular Datacenter on Sun Microsystems ' California campus . In 2011 a new , improved version of the Wayback Machine , with an updated interface and fresher index of archived content , was made available for public testing . In March 2011 it was said on the Wayback Machine forum that " The Beta of the new Wayback Machine has a more complete and up - to - date index of all crawled materials into 2010 , and will continue to be updated regularly . The index driving the classic Wayback Machine only has a little bit of material past 2008 , and no further index updates are planned , as it will be phased out this year . " In January 2013 the company announced a ground - breaking milestone of 240 billion URLs . Use in legal evidence . Civil litigation . Netbula LLC v . Chordiant Software Inc . . In a 2009 case Netbula , LLC v . Chordiant Software Inc . , defendant Chordiant filed a motion to compel Netbula to disable the robots . txt file on its web site that was causing the Wayback Machine to retroactively remove access to previous versions of pages it had archived from Nebula ' s site , pages which Chordiant believed would support its case . Netbula objected to the motion on the ground that defendants were asking to alter Netbula ' s web site and that they should have subpoenaed Internet Archive for the pages directly . However , an employee of Internet Archive filed a sworn statement supporting Chordiant ' s motion , stating that it could not produce the web pages by any other means " without considerable burden , expense and disruption to its operations . " Magistrate Judge Howard Lloyd in the Northern District of California , San Jose Division , rejected Netbula ' s arguments and ordered them to temporarily disable the robots . txt blockage in order to allow Chordiant to retrieve the archived pages that they sought . Telewizja Polska . In an October 2004 case , " Telewizja Polska USA , Inc . v . Echostar Satellite " , No . 02 C 3293 , 65 Fed . R . Evid . Serv . 673 ( N . D . Ill . Oct . 15 , 2004 ) , a litigant attempted to use the Wayback Machine archives as a source of admissible evidence , perhaps for the first time . Telewizja Polska is the provider of TVP Polonia and EchoStar operates the Dish Network . Prior to the trial proceedings , EchoStar indicated that it intended to offer Wayback Machine snapshots as proof of the past content of Telewizja Polska ’ s website . Telewizja Polska brought a motion " in limine " to suppress the snapshots on the grounds of hearsay and unauthenticated source , but Magistrate Judge Arlander Keys rejected Telewizja Polska ’ s assertion of hearsay and denied TVP ' s motion " in limine " to exclude the evidence at trial . However , at the actual trial , district Court Judge Ronald Guzman , the trial judge , overruled Magistrate Keys ' findings , and held that neither the affidavit of the Internet Archive employee nor the underlying pages ( " i . e . " , the Telewizja Polska website ) were admissible as evidence . Judge Guzman reasoned that the employee ' s affidavit contained both hearsay and inconclusive supporting statements , and the purported webpage printouts themselves were not self - authenticating . Patent law . The United States patent office and the European Patent Office , provided some additional requirements are met ( e . g . providing an authoritative statement of the archivist ) , will accept date stamps from the Internet Archive as evidence of when a given Web page was accessible to the public . These dates are used to determine if a Web page is available as prior art for instance in examining a patent application . Limitations of utility . There are technical limitations to archiving a website , and as a consequence , it is possible for opposing parties in litigation to misuse the results provided by website archives . This problem can be exacerbated by the practice of submitting screen shots of web pages in complaints , answers or expert witness reports , when the underlying links are not exposed and therefore can contain errors . For example , archives like the Wayback Machine do not fill out forms and therefore do not include the contents of non - RESTful e - commerce databases in their archives . Legal status . In Europe the Wayback Machine could be interpreted to violate copyright laws . Only the content creator can decide where their content is published or duplicated , so the Archive would have to delete pages from its system upon request of the creator . The exclusion policies for the Wayback Machine can be found in the FAQ section of the site . The Wayback Machine also retroactively respects robots . txt files , i . e . pages which are currently blocked to robots on the live web will be made temporarily unavailable from the archives as well . A number of cases have been brought against the Internet Archive for its Wayback Machine archiving efforts . See Internet Archive controversies and legal disputes . Search engine links . In 2005 , Yahoo ! Search began to provide links to other versions of pages archived on the Wayback Machine .