Document Type
Article
Abstract
This Article begins by tracing the history of the Bates stamp, how it has been used in past litigation, and why it is inadequate to meet the challenges and unique problems of today’s technological world. Next, hash and hashing will be explained with as little mathematics as possible. Some of the remarkable qualities of hash will be examined and a few of the many uses of hash in law and society will be described. As will be shown, hashing has many advantages over Bates stamping, including authentication, filtering, and unique search capabilities, and so is ideally suited to meet the litigation challenges of today and tomorrow. Only hash, hashing, and hash marketing can cope with the incredible volume of data generated today and protect the integrity of evidence and the judicial system. As evidence shifts from paper documents to electronically stored information in ever-increasing quantities, the legal profession must necessarily adopt hash values over simple Bates stamping.
This Article includes all significant cases to date that mention or relate to hash. Although the work is, in this sense, intended to be a complete legal reference, no doubt the comprehensive quality of this Article will necessarily be short-lived. The number of cases mentioning hash increases every month. This corresponds with the many new and innovative applications developed for hash in society at large. Although this Article will be quickly dated as a complete reference, it should serve as a good building block for future articles on hash and the law. In the meantime, this Article may be of some small help to other lawyers and jurists, who may struggle to understand the many elusive qualities and applications of this profound mathematical algorithm.
The proposal made at the conclusion to adopt a new hash-based naming system will, it is hoped, be of more long-lasting value, and will create a new standard for electronic document identification. I urge the legal community and electronic discovery industry to begin using this new naming protocol as soon as possible. The truncated hash value system proposed here is a timely replacement to the archaic Bates stamp. The naming protocol is simple, practical, and easy to use. Most importantly, it can be immediately employed with today’s technology to avoid needless confusion and disputes concerning identification and authenticity of electronic documents. In this way, the proposed hash protocol can help ensure the progress and integrity of our legal system in the dawning new age of electronic discovery.
Recommended Citation
Ralph C. Losey,
Hash: The New Bates Stamp,
12 J. Tech. L. & Pol'y
(2007).
Available at: https://scholarship.law.ufl.edu/jtlp/vol12/iss1/1