The long arm of the Internet ...

The always and instantly available world on Facebook, on Twitter and online causes some embarrassing and damaging instances for people whose antics get the best of them.

Rep. Anthony Weiner is this week’s poster boy. But every month seems to have someone of prominence doing something seemingly outlandish that is flamed in the online world.

Those folks make major news, and that news moves worldwide within seconds.

But the Internet also hosts less prominent, yet still potentially compromising news about people. And instead of launching like Weiner’s scandal, these news items tend to sneak up on people, buried in the archives of newspapers such as ours.

Here’s a real letter to us, edited just slightly to maintain anonymity:

“Dear Vindicator:

“I am the subject of an article in The Vindicator involving my arrest for public indecency. I have since undergone and successfully completed counseling, completed any and all court-ordered sanctions against me, and have not been involved in any other law violation of any kind, in any place. I am now 41 years old. I am a productive member of society. This is the only law violation I have ever been involved in. I lost a very good job with the federal government as a result of my actions. I came very close to losing my wife and children as well. My children are older now. My greatest fear is that they will some day be confronted by other children in school and have to answer and suffer for what I did.

“One hurdle that hinders my ability to protect my children from future embarrassment are Google search results when searching my name. The Vindicator article is first in the search.

“Please know that I take full responsibility and ownership for my actions. The fact that the article exists is my fault and no one else’s. I humbly and respectfully request that you take down the article and will respect your decision, no matter what it is.”

I feel for the guy, to a degree.

Had he done this 15 years ago, his arrest essentially disappears from most public knowledge. He moves a town, a county or a state away, and he’s virtually able to get a clean start.

But today, wherever Google goes, so goes his history — and anyone else’s if at one time you made news like this guy did.

We get a call like his once per month. I found no examples where any media company is pulling down such items. The Internet’s reality is that even if the originating news group pulls it down, it remains stored in various online destinations such as Google, Yahoo and hundreds of other news aggregators.

So it’s not as simple as the Vindy removing a story.

A separate but similar issue is when folks have their record expunged. They will call us in hopes that, because the courts erased it, we can, too.

Expunging is a legal maneuver that allows for a person’s record to be cleaned upon good behavior. But that does not mean the incident never happened. The original news articles speak for themselves.

A law-enforcement officer actually called us on that. He had lost his job and had difficulty getting another police job even though the incident was expunged — because it still comes up on Vindy.com, he said.

Ultimately, readers decide many standards on what gets printed. So I’d like to hear your thoughts on how long names should be online for wrongdoings.

Times change, and who knows what the standard will be 20 years from now. This country once banned alcohol and executions. So who knows what 20 years will bring with this standard.

Until then, consider the advice suggested by an online advice site:

To counter a bad news item about you on Google, flood the Internet with good news items about you.

Todd Franko is editor of The Vindicator. He likes emails about stories and our newspaper. Email him at tfranko@vindy.com. He blogs, too, on vindy.com.