October 10, 2013
Private: Busted Links Happen
busted links, Ed Whelan, Internet, Nina Pillard, Pamela Karlan, technology
Internet links die, that’s the way technology works. Ask the U.S. Supreme Court where according to a recent study by a Harvard professor, 49 percent of links in Supreme Court opinions no longer work.
National Review Online’s Ed Whelan has kindly pointed out some busted links on the ACS website. Actually he does so with hyperbole, probably born out of paranoia. He says ACS in “Stalinist airbrushing” fashion is trying to advance the careers of people he claims we’d like to see confirmed to “judicial office.”
Broken links, however, do not make a conspiracy. Whelan’s legwork has helped us restore links and we’ll make progress quickly on providing access to all our archived video. In 2010 we revamped the ACS website and not all links survived the transition. Again that’s technology and we don’t have an army of people at ACS to restore every link in every blog post or every landing page on the site. With time and capacity many links, especially to video, will be restored. In a small, but growing nonprofit we must prioritize.
Whelan accuses ACS of removing video of an event that Nina Pillard, a professor at Georgetown law school and a nominee for a seat on the powerful U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, participated in during fall 2010. The event focused on class action lawsuits and arbitration. Thanks for pointing out the busted link, Ed. It has been restored, you can watch it here.
He was also disappointed that he could not access video from the 2006 ACS national convention containing comments from Stanford law school professor and ACS Board member Pamela S. Karlan. That video link has also been fixed. The video quality is awful. I’m not sure what vendor ACS used at that time, but video quality of Convention programming is much better now. But the audio works just fine.
California Supreme Court Justice Goodwin Liu, a former ACS Board chair, has spoken at many ACS events. Whelan linked to some transcripts of various Liu speeches, one from 2004, which he says helped defeat his nomination to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Alas, the links to those transcripts have not been restored. But we’re working on it. When and if the links are fixed, I’ll update this blog post.