When you need a robin's-egg blue suit

I don't know the answer to that. But I'm a big fan of respecting the spirit of presumption of innocence. Someone who is a suspect already has enough problems, without additional Web sites further immortalizing their personal info on the Web regardless of whether or not they're eventually found guilty. We have mechanisms for quietly sealing criminal records in certain cases, to reduce the harm done to innocent people, but that doesn't transfer to Web sites and Google.

Many years ago, I wrote a letter to the campus paper at an Ivy about this same issue. It was regarding some student who was accused of rape. The main campus paper *immediately* plastered his name and photo on the front page, and he was very publicly vilified. Sex crimes tend to be treated as guilty-upon-accusation. I was horrified at the situation, when I considered he might actually be innocent, and there was evidence to suggest that he might be. Turns out, he was indeed found not guilty in whatever judicial/disciplinary mechanism was used (I forget whether it was internal to the University). I believe he filed a lawsuit after that, and got public apologies from the accuser and the university. But from what information I could find more recently, the damage was already done, and it appeared that his undergrad life and subsequent career was ruined. IIRC, he managed a cafe for a while and then died in what was called a single-car accident.

Going back to my favorite topic of journalism in the Internet age... This is also a small way in which professional journalism wins. The better professionals appreciate the impact that wrongful charges can have, and can exercise good judgment, better than the least of millions of bloggers can.

Exactly what new etiquette we need for citizens wishing to discuss criminal charges when it's not just ephemeral chatter between a few people, but permanently recorded and accessible text broadcast to thousands or millions... I don't know.

I hate lines; you can never draw them long enough so that everything is either on one side or the other. I think listing someone's name, street address, phone number, and personal e-mail address goes too far. You can't usually get most of that from someone's social network profile unless you're already their friend (at which point trust enters into the equation). However, if they choose to proactively put out personal info in a public profile then I say it's fair game for discussion. DNS info, phonebook info, and the ilk isn't as proactive a disclosure as a social website's profile or set of flickr pics of a recently arrested teen doing 100 mph on the Pike. If Brett had simply said, "I found out your not even from Dorchester" or "You're from New London so how would you know?" that's also different than copypasta from a DNS registry entry.