The Internet Lawyer’s Toolbox

by Toronto Internet Lawyer Gil Zvulony

Below are links to various internet resources that I use on a regular basis.   I find them indispensable to my internet law practice and thought  I would share my favourites with the public.  Of course, the links are provided for convenience only and I or the law firm do not guarantee the accuracy, timeliness or fitness for a particular purpose of the links and the information contained on any third party websites.  If you have any suggestions for this page then feel free to contact me.

Web History

• Google – need I say more?  I use Google to research potential defendants, clients, news, cases and lots of other purposes.  Viewing Google’s cached link is especially useful when you want to see what a recently removed website looked like.  I use the satellite imagery function in Google Maps to verify that a particular address exists and to verify whether it is a house, building, residential or commercial address.
• Internet Archive – the Internet Archive features the Wayback Machine, the sometimes controversial tool that allows anyone to see what a webpage looked like at a particular point in time. This tool has provided key evidence in several cases and is (as of April 2006) now the defendant in a lawsuit over its practices.
• Alexa offers some useful tools to analyze the amount of web traffic a particular website attracts.

Domain Names and IP Address Tracing

• Better Whois offers a a domain name whois service that searches all domain name registrars for .COM .NET .ORG .INFO and .BIZ domain names.
• ARIN (American Registry for Internet Numbers) is one of the five Regional Internet Registries and provides services related to the technical coordination and management of Internet number resources in its respective service region. The ARIN service region includes Canada, the United States, and several islands in the Caribbean Sea and North Atlantic Ocean.  ARIN also has a list of the other Regional Internet Registries if you are researching an IP address that is outside North America.
• DNSSTUFF is a site loaded with tools to trace IP addresses and Domain Names.  My favourite is the tool that allows you to easily connect an IP address to a city.
• INTERNIC’s WHOIS Problem Report page– this reporting page is great when the information contained in a WHOIS report is fraudulent or incorrect and you want the true domain name registrant to reveal his or her identity. (This is not for updating your own WHOIS information).
• A nice introduction to tracing an email’s origin.  Understanding an email’s header is an important skill for an internet lawyer.  Through reading email headers, I was able to expose an impersonator by connecting emails sent from different email addresses and ostensibly different people to the same computer user!

Maps

Online maps allow you to see what a particular address looks like.

• Google Maps
• City of Toronto Maps – Toronto maps featuring aerial views of Toronto

Telephone Directories

• Canada 411 Reverse Phone Lookup – Reverse lookup for home phones only.  Does not include businesses or cell phones
• Canada 411 Reverse Address – Does not show ownership of address but shows who is paying the phone bill