Talk:Westlaw

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I'm unconvinced at the reasoning behind the latest amendment. According to that prolific though slightly unreliable source knowm as Wikipedia, the internet began some time before the late 1980s:

"On 1 January 1983, the ARPANET changed its core networking protocols from NCP to TCP/IP, marking the start of the Internet as we know it today."

Robin Patterson 04:18, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The edit which I reworded claimed that the WWW existed in the late 80s. It didn't, the first usable web browser wasn't released until 1992 or 1993. Remember that the WWW is not the same as the Internet, it's a specific application of the Internet. As you mention, the Internet did exist in the late 80s but it was rarely used for commercial purposes - it was mainly academic. I don't know this for sure, but I doubt that either online system from Westlaw or LexisNexis was based on the Internet. It's more likely that they were based on a dialup network such as Telenet or an online service like Compuserve. Rhobite 04:39, Feb 21, 2005 (UTC)

The case was West Pub. Co. v. Mead Data Cent., Inc. 1986 (799 F.2d 1219; cert denied). The case did not mention internet or any particular network. In the late 1980s, people could remote login the database using telnet protocol. They could also dialup the mainframe. Customers outside the U.S. could use offline CD-ROMs. -- Toytoy 07:54, Feb 21, 2005 (UTC)

I'm not an expert on Westlaw, otherwise I'd make this edit myself, but... this article gives the impression that Westlaw is used only in the United States, which, as a law student in the UK, I can definitively say is not true. TomPhil 17:42, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] TWEN merged here

See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/TWEN. Johnleemk | Talk 12:04, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] International content or versions of Westlaw

After Thomson Corporation purchased West, it instituted projects to add sources from other Thomson companies, both domestic (Lawyers Cooperative Publishing; Clark Boardman Callaghan) and international (Carswell's eCarswell in Canada, Sweet & Maxwell under WestlawUK, Forlaget and Karnov in Denmark under Westlaw Danmark, Fakta in Sweden under Westlaw Sverige, and Aranzadi in Spain under WestlawES). Thomson also had arrangements with others for content for Westlaw.de (Germany), which, it subsequently announced, would be discontinued effective April 30, 2006[1]. Thomson has interests in law book companies in Argentina, Australia, New Zeland, Hong Kong, and Southeast Asia, but I don't know if they have Westlaw or equivalent services. This is a link to Thomson Legal and Regulatory's "W" listings, which include various Westlaw offerings.

Busjack 20:25, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Dial up or Internet

Both Westlaw and LexisNexis started in the 1970s as dial-up services with dedicated terminals. The earliest versions used acoustic couplers or key phones; then smaller terminals with internal modems. Around 1989 or so, both started offering programs for personal computers that emulated the terminals, and when Internet access became available, an Internet address (such as westlaw.westlaw.com) became an alternative that could be selected within the "Communications Setup" option in the client program, instead of a dial-up number. West's program was known as Westmate. It was based on Borland C++ around 1997, and then changed to a program compiled on a Microsoft platform that incorporated portions of Internet Explorer. This was the first program to incorporate HTML; prior to that, Westmate had "jumps" indicated by triangles instead of "links." Shortly after that, both publishers started developing web browser interfaces (Westlaw's being notable for the use of web dialogs, saying that this duplicated piling open books on a table), and I believe that development of the separate client programs has ceased. Busjack 20:25, 2 February 2006 (UTC)