[ghaff]

You and others are essentially arguing that we should put artificial barriers in place for accessing information that is public as a matter of law. Arguably there is information that's public today only because the circumstances at the time when that decision was made were different. But the solution would be to make less information public if it's a problem. Not to tell people they can only access this information when the town clerk is in the office--and he doesn't come in much.

[distances]

I disagree. That is an excellent throttling mechanism. Keeps records open but preserves a modicum of privacy.

It's another topic if court records should be public at all, but I gather that's a pretty integral element of US judicial system.

[giantg2]

How does that work? Lawyers and others can run searches and have for decades. This isn't anything new, except now you don't have to pay a lot of money.

Either it's private or it's not. Fake throttling that discriminates based one's ability to pay or suffer inconvenience is ridiculous. Not to mention, it's been decades since this information hasn't been available in this format.