Pages

Where this is used

Case 1The mandatory notice nobody thought to keep

A privacy notice, a withdrawal policy, an accessibility statement, a disclosure that content was generated by a machine: each of them has to be available, and each of them sits at its own address, not on the front page. A year later an authority asks since when it said what it says now. The content management system can answer, but it belongs to the party being asked, which is exactly why the answer carries little weight.

Under daily observation those pages become a matter of record: for each day the bytes as they were served, sealed that night and anchored outside this archive. The answer to “since when” is then a document, not an assurance.

Compliance · supervisory enquiry · data protection officer

Case 2Terms and prices that changed between order and dispute

Terms of business are superseded, a price list is reissued, a delivery promise is reworded. When a customer or a competitor later disputes what applied on the day of the order, both sides produce their own version, and neither version is evidence of anything except what its owner kept.

Ten addresses cover the pages this usually turns on. Because each is fetched daily, the record shows not only what they said but on which day the wording changed, and it shows it for the side that asks, whichever side that is.

Contract law · consumer disputes · company counsel

Case 3Someone else’s pages, recorded before they matter

The addresses need not be yours. A supplier’s service levels, a licensee’s product claims, a marketplace’s seller conditions: pages that are unremarkable today and decisive the moment a contract goes wrong.

Starting the record once the dispute exists means starting on the day the other side already knows about it. Starting it earlier costs the same and removes that objection entirely. What each page said on a given day remains available to either side, as an extract, at the published fee.

Supplier and platform disputes · pre-litigation · in-house counsel

What you can use it for

For every named address, and for every day from the admission onwards:

• What exactly did this page say on that day, byte for byte?
• On which days did it change, and what did it say before each change?
• Was it publicly reachable at all, or did the server refuse or fail to answer?
• Since when has an independent third party been recording it, and can that be checked without us?
• Was the record created before the matter arose, rather than in response to it?

1. You name the addressesUp to ten on one domain. We do not ask what the matter is.
2. Both witnesses retrieve them dailyFrom admission onwards, each storing its own copy.
3. The day is sealedEvery observation of the day is reduced to one fingerprint.
4. The root is anchored outside this archiveHanded out of the house the same day, so it cannot be corrected later.

From the day the addresses are admitted, both witnesses fetch each of them daily, seal the day, and anchor the root outside this archive. The domain itself joins the core at the same time, at no extra charge.

Typical use: this is rarely filed on its own. It creates the record from which a document is drawn later, an extract for one day, or a twelve-month record when the question is on which day something changed.

What is recorded, field by field

For each address you name, fetched daily by each witness separately: the exact bytes the server delivered, their SHA-256 fingerprint, the complete response headers, the TLS certificate chain presented at delivery, the address the request finally resolved to after any redirects, and the moment of retrieval in UTC. Stored in full, without a size limit. Where a page is absent or the server refuses the request, that fact is recorded with the same care as content, not left blank.

The domain comes with it. Booking this also admits the domain itself to the core, at no extra charge: its front page and the four machine-readable files at its root (robots.txt, ai.txt, /.well-known/tdmrep.json, llms.txt), on the same daily footing. You are buying ten addresses on top of a standing observation, not instead of one.

Any public address counts, not only an HTML page. A document, a feed, a price list as JSON, a policy as PDF: if it answers a plain request without a login, it can be one of the ten.

Full field-by-field schema, with a worked example: what we store.

What is not recorded

Bytes, not pixels. What the server sent, not how a browser would have drawn it. Where a matter turns on what a page looked like (the placement of a notice, what a consumer would have seen without scrolling), this is the wrong instrument, and we would rather say so before you pay.

Ten, not eleven. If what you need runs to more addresses than that, the honest answer is whole site, for a domain you can show is yours, and not a second booking of this one. For someone else’s domain, ten named addresses are the limit of what is offered here.

Pages assembled by script. Where the text only appears after JavaScript has run, the bytes we receive may be close to empty. We check each address before confirming and decline the ones where a capture would say nothing.

Also not recorded: anything behind a login, any rating, any comparison. And no notification: if a page changes you will not hear from us, because a witness that alerts one side is no longer a witness to both.

What sealed means here

This block is the same on every page of this site, and it is repeated on purpose: it is the part you need in order to judge everything else.

1. One fingerprint for the whole day. Every observation made that day, yours among hundreds of thousands, is reduced to a single hash through a Merkle tree. One changed byte anywhere in that day, and the fingerprint no longer matches. There is no version that could be quietly corrected.
2. Published where anyone can see it. The fingerprint goes into the public log the same night, under a fixed, citable URL, together with the instructions for recomputing it.
3. Handed out of the house three times on the same day. An RFC 3161 time-stamp service, a decentralised OpenTimestamps anchor in the Bitcoin blockchain, and a qualified eIDAS time-stamp from GLOBALTRUST (e-commerce monitoring GmbH, Austria), a qualified trust service provider listed on the EU Trusted List. The third of these is paid for and supervised, and it is worth saying so plainly: only the qualified time-stamp carries the presumption laid down in Article 41(2) eIDAS. A free anchor establishes that the data existed and has not changed, but it carries no presumption laid down by law.
4. Twice over, by two witnesses that cannot write to each other. Two machines at two providers in two countries, with separate keys. Each seals its own day and takes its own anchors.

In plain words, two sentences. We cannot change a byte afterwards, because the day's fingerprint would no longer match. And we cannot backdate one, because that fingerprint has been in other people's hands since the night it was made. No one has to believe us: every step can be repeated with standard tools.

Further: how it works · what we store · glossary.

Does this stand up in court?

We cannot promise that, and nobody can promise it honestly: what a court accepts is for the court to decide. What we can tell you is what the document is made of, and each of the four facts below can be checked before you buy anything.

1. It comes from a third party, not from you. Not your screenshot, not your server log. The bytes were fetched and stored by a third party that did not know your matter existed, on a day chosen by the calendar and not by the case. That is the difference between a record and an account of events.
2. A presumption laid down by law. Every sealed day since 31 July 2026 carries a qualified electronic time-stamp from a qualified trust service provider on the EU Trusted List. Under Article 41(2) of Regulation (EU) No 910/2014 (eIDAS), such a time-stamp enjoys a presumption of the accuracy of the date and time it indicates and of the integrity of the data it is linked to. Article 41(1) says something much narrower, namely that a time-stamp may not be denied legal effect merely because it is electronic. The two paragraphs are routinely confused; the one that matters here is the second.
3. Two independent witnesses. Two machines, two providers, two countries, separate keys. Each one seals its own day and anchors it externally on its own. Neither can write to the other, so neither can be corrected to match the other after the fact.
4. Verifiable without us. An appointed expert repeats every step with standard tools: recompute the hash of the file, rebuild the path from that hash to the day's root, check the root against the public log and against the external anchors. We do not have to be believed, and that is the point of the whole construction.

What follows from this in your particular matter is for your lawyer to say. We do not advise, do not rate and do not take a side, and the other side can order the same document on the same published terms. That is not a weakness of the document. It is the reason it is worth anything.

How to order

1. By e-mail to contact@machinewitness.eu, or through the form on this site. Name the addresses, and your billing address with a VAT number if you have one. We do not ask what the matter is.
2. We confirm in writing what we received and name the fee for your request. Nothing is charged before you have that in writing.
3. You receive a payment link.
4. Nothing is delivered at this stage, because what you are buying is the record itself. Extracts drawn from it later arrive within five working days; where a court deadline is running, say so when you order and we handle it within 48–72 hours instead, ahead of the normal queue.
5. The addresses are entered, with their date, in the public record, within five working days of payment, and are fetched daily from then on.

We answer in German, English or Spanish.

Fee

150 € per year, for up to ten addresses on one domain, charged yearly in advance, as set out in the fee table. The admission of the domain itself is included and is not charged separately. If the year is not renewed, nothing is taken away: the days already recorded stay sealed and remain available as extracts, and the domain stays in the core; what lapses is the daily fetching of the ten named addresses. A record here is never withdrawn, because a gap in a record is worth less than no record at all.

Form of the result

The admission itself: a dated entry in the public record, on both witnesses, checkable at any time through the coverage check. There is no document at this stage, because the document is the extract or the twelve-month record drawn later from the days that were recorded.

The method sheet is included. Every extract comes with the general method sheet at no extra charge, including the one covering a single day. It describes how this archive observes, seals and anchors, and it carries a version and a date. It is not written for your matter, and it does not have to be: it is the same for everyone, which is precisely what makes it checkable.

The technical procedure statement is a different document, written for this particular observation, signed and addressed to a court or an appointed expert. You do not need it in order to file the extract. It becomes relevant when the other side disputes the method rather than the content. See the fee table.

What becomes public, and what does not

Visible to anyone

• that the domain or URL is observed, and from which date
• the dated entry in the public record of admissions
• the daily roots and anchors, as for every other observation

Never published

• who applied, in no document
• why: we do not ask what the matter is
• what the files said: content is issued only as an extract, at the published fee, to anyone

The other side can see that the URL is observed, and since when. That is the price of a witness that belongs to no party, and it belongs here, before the purchase, not in the small print. Where a look-alike domain is observed as a precaution, an opponent may infer that someone is preparing. Whoever does not want that buys a capture of a single day instead of a standing observation.

Neutrality. This archive records; it does not rate, rank or advise. Three conditions hold for everything on this page: it is visible to everyone in the same way; the fee is published and depends neither on who asks nor on how a matter ends; and whoever pays receives nothing a third party would not also receive, which means no notification, no mention as the applicant, no priority, and no content without an extract that anyone else could order too.

Further reading: how it works · evidence extract · terms, section 5.