• by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, August 19, 2009

When Amazon remotely removed George Orwell's "1984" and "Big Brother" from people's Kindles, it wasn't the first time content was digitally purged. And it won't be the last.

Today, there's a report that a federal judge in Pennsylvania, Lawrence Stengel, has withdrawn eight written opinions he issued in a lawsuit -- and also ordered the legal databases Lexis and Westlaw to expunge them from their records. It's not clear why Stengel took this step, since the motion to seal the record was itself kept secret.

Regardless, print copies and/or digital versions of Stengel's original opinions presumably still exist. It's probably only a matter of time until they're available for free online -- which would mark an improvement for interested readers, given that Lexis and Westlaw charge for access. What's more, the opinions are probably more likely to draw interest now than had Stengel not directed Lexis and Westlaw to purge them.

Still, this ability to tinker with the historical record at the click of a mouse vividly illustrates the prospect of censorship in the digital era. It also shows why there will always be a need for some form of print records, which can't be recalled quite as easily as digital bytes.