> How can you be using that argument if you
don't believe that the court documents should be private?<<
Looks as though I wasn't expressing myself very clearly. I'll take another try.
I think that the court documents should be public.
I think that, barring objections from the coprygiht holder, the record of changes to
remove copyright violations should be public. If the copyright holder objects, hiding them
beats a legal fight, even though I think they are not a copyright infringement.
Google was served with a takedown notice and complied with it by removing the identified
items from its search results. Presumably it also supplied a copy of the notice to the
http://chillingeffects.org web site and it arranged for its search result page to point to
the takedown notice, which in turn gave people all of the search results it had been asked
to remove.
My assertion was that the Google action was roughly comparable to the Wikipedia leaving
history entries visible, but not part of the main work, that it was likely that Google had
obtained capable legal advice supporting its practice, and that this suggested that we
should avoid over-reaction to takedown notices in the light of their practice.
Instead of delete, I advocated a notification to the copyright holder telling them about
the history and inviting them to let us know whether it was objectionable to them, so they
could choose to request that we remove the history if they wish. If they make the request,
I suggest that we comply promptly (or expeditiously if they reply with another takedown
notice).
As a seperate matter, I argued that if a private Wikipedia contributor wanted their
personal information removed, we shouldn't let the GFDL release of the information
inhibit us from being socially good and helping them to remove it, even though the GFDL
release means we could ignore the request.
Does this clarify my views sufficiently to address your question? If not, please let me
know which areas need further larification.