Dear Lawyer With A Subpoena,
We have some very bad news for you. The Internet is not what you see on CSI.
- There are no rooms full of tech-heads standing in front of giant glowing glass walls literally pulling data out of thin air. To be honest if you’re a lawyer employed by some federal law enforcement agency, we’d expect that YOU would have the glowing glass wall, not us.
- If you ask us to cross-reference all Bridgestone 225×70 R17 tire purchases in Centereach, NY with all blonde men purchasing airline tickets to Brazil in June 2008, we will stare back at you blankly. If you stare back, we may begin to laugh. Try to not to take it personally.
- We don’t archive every message board post made on every site run on every server to ever exist on our network since the fall of the Roman Empire. As such, we’re really sorry, but we can’t give you the entire life history of “ridingchick22″ because you know what her IP address was in December of 2009. No, really. We don’t know her name. Or her mailing address. We probably wouldn’t bet any signficant amount of money that she’s even really a chick, or a rider for that matter.
- We also cannot provide you with a copy of how any given web page may have looked on any given day in the past. We do not version control and archive every page on every website on every server on our network, because why would we? Well, other than to make you happy when you come waving a subpoena, why would we?
Finally, please stop being so angry about all of this. We understand that if you can’t produce this information you can’t justify the obscene hourly rate you’re charging your client, but that doesn’t change anything. Much like there’s nothing new in the refrigerator since you last checked 5 minutes ago, calling for the 10th time asking the same question is not going to get you a different answer, regardless of how flabbergasted you may be.
Take our advice and just let it go. You’ll have a much happier life once you do.
Sincerely,
The Internet Guys