What's the most official means of finding a DNS whois history?
October 11, 2014 12:45 PM Subscribe
This is a question about the integrity of DNS records in terms of historical accuracy. A friend of mine is an investigative journalist who's doing a critical reexamination of the Facebook origin story has come across something that doesn't quite make sense and he doesn't have the technical expertise to parse its meaning or lack thereof.
According to two different DNS records, including a "historical record" from domaintools.com, Zuckerberg's facemash.com domain registration took place a week after the story was supposed to have occurred. According to accounts in the Crimson (and thus all later retellings) the Facemash incident was supposed to have occurred starting on Oct 28th 2003 (http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2003/11/4/hot-or-not-website-briefly-judges/) but the site wasn't registered until Nov. 4th, 2003 - the day the story was first reported on (https://who.is/domain-history/facemash.com) (http://s2.postimg.org/ah57q3nvd/facemash_com_history_DNS.png). His current theory is that the domain was hastily changed to protect the identity of the students on the site and/or Harvard's own muck up - either scenario he believes would be an interesting historical footnote if true. So my question is this: is there an official, legally-rock solid way of obtaining a website DNS registration date? As in, that which could be used in a court of law and is officially sanctioned by some authority? If it's just a red-herring he'd like to move on but if there actually is an inconsistency he'd like to follow up. Any help would be appreciated.
According to two different DNS records, including a "historical record" from domaintools.com, Zuckerberg's facemash.com domain registration took place a week after the story was supposed to have occurred. According to accounts in the Crimson (and thus all later retellings) the Facemash incident was supposed to have occurred starting on Oct 28th 2003 (http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2003/11/4/hot-or-not-website-briefly-judges/) but the site wasn't registered until Nov. 4th, 2003 - the day the story was first reported on (https://who.is/domain-history/facemash.com) (http://s2.postimg.org/ah57q3nvd/facemash_com_history_DNS.png). His current theory is that the domain was hastily changed to protect the identity of the students on the site and/or Harvard's own muck up - either scenario he believes would be an interesting historical footnote if true. So my question is this: is there an official, legally-rock solid way of obtaining a website DNS registration date? As in, that which could be used in a court of law and is officially sanctioned by some authority? If it's just a red-herring he'd like to move on but if there actually is an inconsistency he'd like to follow up. Any help would be appreciated.
Response by poster: The only primary source for the event is the Crimson article I linked to. (http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2003/11/4/hot-or-not-website-briefly-judges/ ). Both books on the history of Facebook, "Accidental Billionaires" (http://books.google.com/books?id=1cw8AJTBbZMC&q=facemash.com#v=snippet&q=facemash.com&f=false) and "The Facebook Effect" cite that article. I don't believe there is another corroborating account.
posted by Partario at 3:32 PM on October 11, 2014
posted by Partario at 3:32 PM on October 11, 2014
Maybe there's a cache somewhere of the journaling he mentions in the article, where he might say when he registered the domain, or maybe it's still in his timeline on FB itself.
posted by rhizome at 11:01 PM on October 11, 2014
posted by rhizome at 11:01 PM on October 11, 2014
ICANN requires registrars to hold on to registration data (including registration date) for three years after the expiration of a registration (see Registrar Accreditation Agreement). Since the original registration expired and someone else bought the domain, Register.com is not under any obligation to still have this data.
At this point you are trusting a third party's cache of old registration data. Does that mean it's necessarily inaccurate? No. Does that mean that it's legally binding? I can't say, but that would probably depend on what the company providing the data would be willing to swear to in a court of law.
Further, I took a look at some of my old registrations. I found one confirmation of a registration in 1999 that is two days before the creation date currently listed in the whois record. I don't know if there was just a lag in their system updates or if there was some billing issue. Either way, it does make me wonder if creation dates are really accurate enough for this kind of story. The Crimson article said "for a few hours this weekend" which would have meant November 1 or November 2. So this could be as little as a two day discrepancy - about the same length as the one I found in my own records.
If you really want to dig, look for public mailing list archives at Harvard and see if you can find any dated messages referencing facemash.com.
posted by NormieP at 12:39 AM on October 12, 2014 [1 favorite]
At this point you are trusting a third party's cache of old registration data. Does that mean it's necessarily inaccurate? No. Does that mean that it's legally binding? I can't say, but that would probably depend on what the company providing the data would be willing to swear to in a court of law.
Further, I took a look at some of my old registrations. I found one confirmation of a registration in 1999 that is two days before the creation date currently listed in the whois record. I don't know if there was just a lag in their system updates or if there was some billing issue. Either way, it does make me wonder if creation dates are really accurate enough for this kind of story. The Crimson article said "for a few hours this weekend" which would have meant November 1 or November 2. So this could be as little as a two day discrepancy - about the same length as the one I found in my own records.
If you really want to dig, look for public mailing list archives at Harvard and see if you can find any dated messages referencing facemash.com.
posted by NormieP at 12:39 AM on October 12, 2014 [1 favorite]
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by rhizome at 1:00 PM on October 11, 2014 [2 favorites]