NEWSPAPERS ASK FOR ONLINE ACCESS TO COURT FILES

By: Todd Shields Federal Judges To Set Policy


Newspaper industry figures told the federal judiciary Friday that journalists
- and the public - should enjoy the same rights of access to
electronically filed court documents as they do to traditional paper files.
Federal judges are trying to set policy on how to deal with the increasing
proportion of court documents that are in electronic format.

Some privacy advocates fear that permitting open access via the Internet invites
public humiliation and even criminal identity theft.

Officials appearing before the Judicial Conference of the United States on
behalf of the newspaper industry included Kenneth B. Allen, executive vice
president of the National Newspaper Association, and John F. Sturm, president of
the Newspaper Association of America.



Todd Shields (tshields@editorandpublisher.com) is the Washington editor for E&P.



Copyright 2001, Editor & Publisher.