There was a bit of blog discussion in the spring 2008 Metadata course about this case of a man who sued Cornell University because a 1983 article in the school paper (about him having been charged with burglary) suddenly became widely available when the archives were digitized and posted online. 

I can understand his concern: a youthful misdeed which had been mostly forgotten and which, one hopes, is not representative of his character today, is now going to be freely visible to anyone doing an internet search on his name. People contemplating doing business with him, dating him, accepting his friend requests on Facebook—all will be able to read about this decades-old episode. Yeah, that’s a drag.

It’s not that you necessarily would lie about it and deny embarrassing stuff from your past, but you don’t want them popping up on the first page of your Google results, right? If someone wants to know the dumb stuff I did in college, they should have to go to that college and poke through the archives in person, and I hope they get paper cuts and dust in their noses while they do it. That’s journalism, damn it! (I’m merely throwing this in for dramatic effect: I personally never did anything dumb in college.)

Nevertheless, though sympathetic to this guy’s point, I think we really can’t have people suppressing the availability of otherwise public information because it’s embarrassing to them. Sorry. 

So I was pleased to read in the latest American Libraries that the lawsuit has been dismissed. According to the story, however, the ruling “did not address the question of whether making older information available online constitutes republication.” (The suit contended that making the article digitally available constituted republication of the information in it, and that the University was therefore responsible for what was presented.)

The aggrieved man also still has another suit pending which “claims that by submitting the original report and evidence of his arrest in open court, Cornell once again republished the information.” Again, I understand not wanting certain things to be public, but dude, it’s in the historical record. This stuff happened. Reports were produced that were publicly available. I think that means people can look at them, even 25 years later.

But I am in no sense a legal expert, so I could be wrong. Anyway, it was interesting to read the follow-up on that case.