The Connecticut case is just one manifestation of an anxious backlash against the invasive power of the Internet, a world of Big Data and ever more powerful search engines, in which it seems almost everything is permanently recorded and accessible to almost anyone — potential employers, landlords, dates, predators. In Europe, where press freedoms are less sacred and the right to privacy is more ensconced, the idea has taken hold that individuals have a “right to be forgotten,” and those who want their online particulars expunged tend to have the government on their side. In Germany or Spain, Lorraine Martin might have a winning case.

I sense that the idea is gaining traction here. Erasure laws seem to be proliferating. States feel greater pressure to put public records offline. (After a New York newspaper published names and addresses of local handgun permit-holders, the Legislature in Albany sharply limited access to that information.) Google’s latest transparency report shows a sharp rise in requests from governments and courts to take down potentially damaging material. Editors tell me they are increasingly beset by readers who once cooperated with a reporter on a sensitive subject — nudism, anorexia, bullying — and years later find that old story a recurring source of distress. (It’s called “source remorse.”)…

Some papers have compromised by agreeing in certain instances to insert a bit of code in online articles that prevents them from being fetched by the major search engines. The stories can still be found in the paper’s digital archive, just as they can be found in bound volumes at the local library, but they do not show up on Google. The Hearst Corporation, a defendant in that Connecticut libel suit, is experimenting with such a program. The Times considered a similar policy a few years ago, and we decided it was a slippery slope. But perhaps it’s time to reopen that discussion.