Greetings. The Washington Post is reporting that in the wake of the horrific attack and murder at the Washington D.C. Holocaust Memorial Museum earlier this week, Web sites around the Net have been attempting to "rewrite history" by removing materials related to the shooter, and other associated pages. Reportedly included in this category of "Web revisionists" is Wikipedia.

It's impossible not to draw immediate comparisons with Orwell's 1984, where history was routinely deleted and modified to fit the sensibilities of the current day.

But the real takeaway point from the article is that the original materials continue to be available through any number of archival points, so any attempts to remove them merely draw attention to the retroactive self-censorship, and don't seriously impact the availability of the materials themselves. In fact, the deletions may serve only to draw more attention to those materials in their alternate locations.

While it's understandable that some sites may feel embarrassed by various of the related writings and wish to somehow "purge" themselves, the reality is, as I've said many times before, that it's impossible to effectively censor the Internet, and that trying to remove access to materials that have ever received public attention is a fool's errand.

Interestingly, it appears that even some of the most well known sites on the Internet still haven't learned these basic facts.

--Lauren--