"Unpublishing" = re-writing / revising history

Another dimension to the internet most of us would probably not even thought about....

"The Internet has opened up the past and made it fungible with a few keystrokes. The offended know it's physically easy to change a story online."

AlterNet reports:

"Once upon a time, news stories were entombed in newspaper "morgues" and rarely saw the dusty light of day.

Now the news never dies. Millions of people can search the archives online -- an amazing benefit unless, perhaps, you're someone who was actually in the news.

In a recent survey of 110 news organizations, the Toronto Star found that increasingly, publishers are fielding regular requests from anxious and embarrassed readers to "unpublish" information, sometimes months or years after it first appeared online.

Some readers don't want their marital status or the price of their home known, or they were quoted saying something they now regret. They may be angry because the news of their arrest was reported, but not the news that they were acquitted or that charges were dropped, and their names keep popping up on Internet searches in connection with the crimes, usually misdemeanors.

Pre-Internet, of course, the reports remained on paper, intact and inviolable -- but also inaccessible to the casual viewer and probably unknown."

Continue reading here.

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Mahler's Prodigal Son

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