Wow, thanks for sharing your perspective it's quite different from mine. For me reality is not democratic, number of people making a claim doesn't influence the truthiness of it.
I bring up judges because Internet archive captures have been used as evidence in court cases, the first one I pulled up [0] makes an interesting distinction on whether the archive's snapshots are merely hearsay:
The hearsay rule does not apply to the document (so far as it contains the representation) if the representation was made:
(a) by a person who had or might reasonably be supposed to have had personal knowledge of the asserted fact; or ...
The archive's office manager submitted an affidavit to the court as someone who would have personal knowledge of the fact that the date and claimed availability of the content are accurate. There's no cryptography involved, just an individual and an institutions reputation - this carries much more weight than any number of anonymous individuals attesting to a cryptographic proof
I bring up judges because Internet archive captures have been used as evidence in court cases, the first one I pulled up [0] makes an interesting distinction on whether the archive's snapshots are merely hearsay:
The archive's office manager submitted an affidavit to the court as someone who would have personal knowledge of the fact that the date and claimed availability of the content are accurate. There's no cryptography involved, just an individual and an institutions reputation - this carries much more weight than any number of anonymous individuals attesting to a cryptographic proof[0] https://www.judgments.fedcourt.gov.au/judgments/Judgments/fc...