We too have had this problem over many years, of course, though in our
case it is somewhat mitigated by the fact that there is a lot less
collateral damage in Supreme Court opinions.  Our counterparts at
AustLII found themselves on the front page of the Sydney morning paper
for a week back in the mid-90's over similar issues.  Though I have
the exact reservations, trepidations, and sympathies that both you and
John do, we have chosen a rather hard line on this-- namely, that
public records are indeed public and that decisions about what should
and should not be public are a matter for vigorous public debate.  And
while I do appreciate that John (in particular) is doing a good job of
recreating the "practical obscurity" that paper records have, I am not
sure that we should do so in the absence of clear policies from the
courts.

The reason for our position is simply that I do not feel that
publishers should take these policies on themselves, nor should they
let the courts off the hook.  I am not comfortable with wide-open
court records, but I am equally uncomfortable with the idea that four
guys in Sydney, unelected  and unappointed by anybody, are deciding
what privacy policy is for public records of public judgments in
Australia.  No doubt they make good choices.  But that is a choice in
which the government and the courts, as agents of the public, should
be guided by transparent public discussion and debate.

That's something that has happened in many venues -- New York State
did a particularly good job of balancing competing concerns, but many
other jurisdictions have as well.  It has not happened at the Federal
level.  And while my sympathies are very much with those who have
suffered from this kind of exposure, and not with the 'looky-loos',  I
think that courts should act and that we should not relieve them of
their obligation to do so.

Best,
Thomas R. Bruce
Director, Legal Information Institute
Cornell Law School
http://www.law.cornell.edu/