The discussion on the Doe v. Volokh thread struck me as quite interesting, and I was particularly intrigued by some commenters taking the view that, while I have the legal right to write about Doe, I shouldn't, because she's asked me not to. Here's one comment that I think captures this view particularly well:
So this woman contacts you and asks you to stop writing about her, and to remove your prior writings about her. You respond that you have a legal right to to write about her. She files suit against you, you prevail, and then you write about the whole affair, thus adding to your public writings on the woman who initially sought to have you not write about her.
You're such a classy person.
I don't think that's the right approach, but I think it's an important and difficult question, and one that is routinely faced by people who write about court cases, including newspaper reporters, magazine writers, academics, and bloggers. "Be classy" or "be kind" can't really capture the right analysis, I think, perhaps because news reporting (which I use broadly to cover also opinion and analysis related to news, litigation, and the like) is inherently an unkind phenomenon—or perhaps, in aiming to be good to people seeking information, it may necessarily be unkind to people seeking to conceal information. Still, it bears some deeper discussion.
