Point-in-time record

Where this is used

Case 1A page that will not survive the first letter

Someone has published a statement that is going to be contested: a claim about a product, a price, a term of business, an assertion about a competitor. Right now it is there, in public, for anyone to read. The moment the first letter arrives, it may be edited, softened or taken down, and what remains is an argument about what it used to say.

A record made before that letter goes out turns the question from recollection into record: the page as a browser showed it, the exact bytes the server delivered, the moment of retrieval to the second, the response headers, and the chain to a day that was sealed and handed out of this house before anyone knew there was a dispute.

Unfair competition · advertising claims · litigation counsel

Case 2The same capture, asked for by the side being accused

An allegation arrives with a screenshot attached. A screenshot is the other party’s own account of events, and it can be disputed for exactly that reason, but disputing it is not the same as showing what was really there.

Anyone may ask for this, including the side defending itself, at the same published fee and on the same terms. The address is fetched, the day is sealed, and the resulting document does not favour whoever paid for it. Where the page has already changed, that too is a fact this archive will state plainly rather than conceal.

Defence · pre-litigation · in-house counsel

Case 3Your own page, on the day before it is replaced

A site is about to be relaunched, a price list reissued, a set of terms superseded. Afterwards the old version exists only in a content management system that the company itself controls, which is precisely the reason an opponent will not accept it.

Capturing the page on its last day puts the old version outside your own control, where it can be produced later without anyone having to take your word for how it got there.

Relaunch · terms and price changes · company counsel

What you can use it for

A point-in-time record answers these questions, for the day it was made:

• What did this address show on that day, as a browser displayed it, and what did it serve, byte for byte?
• At what moment was it fetched, to the second, in UTC?
• Was it publicly reachable at all, or did the server refuse the request?
• Was it fetched by an independent third party rather than by a party to the matter, and can that be checked without us?
• Did the same address already stand under observation before today, and if so, since when?

Typical use: filed as an exhibit to a pleading. If the method is challenged rather than the content, the technical procedure statement is filed alongside it.

1. You name the addressesPublic URLs. We do not ask what the matter is.
2. Both witnesses fetch them that dayTwo machines at two providers, each rendering and storing its own copy.
3. Delivered straight awayEach witness stamps its capture with its own qualified eIDAS time-stamp; you receive PDF and ZIP by e-mail.
4. The day is sealedEach capture is also one more leaf in that day’s tree; the day’s proof follows as a supplement, with the path to the root and the anchors.

Before you pay, the checkout states when the capture will start, in your local time: straight away when the witnesses are free, otherwise after their daily work. No capture starts after 21:30 UTC; a later order starts the next morning.

What happens to the address afterwards. The record covers that one day, and nothing continues on its own. The day already sealed stays sealed: nothing here is ever withdrawn. If the page should be recorded from tomorrow on as well, that is daily observation.

What is recorded, field by field

Each witness fetches every address you named and stores, separately from the other: the image of the page as a browser renders it, in full length, 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. Where the server refuses the request or does not answer at all, that fact is recorded with the same care as content and appears in the extract as what it is. A refusal on the day in question is itself a fact about that day, not a failed order.

Any public address, not only a front page. A page deep in a site, a document, a feed, a price list as JSON, if it answers a plain request without a login, it can be captured. What cannot be captured is anything a visitor only reaches after signing in.

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

What is not recorded, and when this is the wrong tool

No action on the page. The witnesses load the page as a visitor would, without logging in, without clicking, without filling in anything. A page whose retrieval would itself trigger an action, an order or a vote, is not captured.

Pages assembled by script. The image shows the page after the browser has run its scripts; the source code shows what the server delivered. Where the two differ, both are there, and neither is interpreted.

A moment, not a whole day. The capture is evidence of what the address served at the moment stated in UTC. It says nothing about the hours before or after, and the record does not pretend otherwise.

Also not recorded: anything behind a login, any rating, any comparison. And no notification: if something changes afterwards 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. You ask for the capture, but you do not make it: the bytes are fetched and stored by a third party that does not know your matter and does not ask about it. That is the difference between a record and an account of events. Where the address already stood under observation before you asked, the record is stronger still, because it then predates the dispute, and the extract states plainly which of the two applies, rather than leaving the stronger reading to be assumed.
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

Online, with the form below: name the addresses and continue to the payment page. Billing address and VAT number are entered there, and VAT is applied as the law requires. Or by e-mail, if you would rather have the fee confirmed in writing first. We do not ask what the matter is.

1. After payment you receive a confirmation with your reference straight away. The invoice follows separately.
2. Before you pay, each address is checked. If one cannot be captured under the rules above, because it sits behind a login or its retrieval would itself trigger an action, it is refused there; if one still fails during the capture, that address is refunded in full.
3. The capture starts at the time stated before payment and is delivered as soon as both witnesses have made it. Once the day is sealed, the day’s proof follows as a supplement.

We answer in German, English or Spanish.

Order and pay online.

Addresses

Full addresses beginning with https://, one per line, all on the same domain, up to twenty. Addresses on another domain are a second order.

Payment is collected by Martin Schenk S.L., Madrid, the company that operates MachineWitness. Its name appears on the payment page, on your card statement and on the invoice.

Continue to payment

Net prices. The payment page is secure; card details never reach this site.

Or order in writing, with the fee confirmed first.

By e-mail to contact@machinewitness.eu: name the addresses, and your billing address with a VAT number if you have one. We confirm in writing what we received and the fee. Nothing is charged before you have that in writing; you then receive a payment link.

Fee

9 € per address, as set out in the fee table, up to twenty addresses on one domain in one order. Each witness takes its own qualified eIDAS time-stamp over your capture when it is made, and the capture is also part of the day’s tree, under the qualified time-stamp every sealed day receives.

Form of the result

A PDF and a ZIP for the day in question. The PDF shows the image of each page and states what was fetched, when, by which witness, with what result. The ZIP carries the images and the delivered bytes themselves, the response headers, the certificate chain, the path from the file’s hash to that day’s root, the anchors, and a plain-text description of how to recompute each step without us. Both witnesses appear in it, separately, so the two can be held against each other.

See a real record before you order

This is not a mock-up. It is a real order, captured on 29 September 2026 on four pages of contix.es, an invoicing product of the same company that runs MachineWitness, by both witnesses, with a qualified eIDAS time-stamp each, and sealed that night. It was built by the same code as every delivery. You can open the reading copy and download the two packages it rests on, and check them yourself with the instructions inside, without asking us.

• Reading copy, PDF (2.5 MB, 41 pages)
• Package of the first witness, ZIP (2.6 MB)
• Package of the second witness, ZIP (2.6 MB)

Each package holds the image, the delivered bytes, the rendered page, the headers, the certificate chain, both time-stamps and a file VERIFY.txt that walks through every check with standard tools. The reading copy is issued in English, German, Spanish, French, Italian or Polish, as you choose; the packages do not depend on a language.

The method sheet is included. Every record and 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 orders a record 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.