Thanks to William Slawski at Larry Sullivan's blog for the pointer to this study by the Center for Democracy and Technology on efforts by the states to provide online access to court records.  Excellent article with good references to source material, model policy efforts, and standards efforts for information sharing.  In explaining the variety of approaches among the states discovered by the study, the CDT comments:

At the same time, a review of current practices indicates that the state and local courts are engaged in a series of difficult and novel balancing acts. One involves the balance between privacy and accountability. What information should be available online? Many states make judicial opinions at the appellate levels freely available online but do not offer online access to trial court proceedings, which generally contain more detailed and sensitive evidence. Others offer access to trial court dockets and a variety of other information at the trial level. Should a distinction be drawn between civil cases and criminal cases? Another set of issues concern cost: Is it appropriate to charge for online access? Does a subscription or fee-based system appropriately limit dissemination to professionals such as lawyers or does it exclude ordinary citizens? Questions like these pose a significant challenge to states attempting to design access systems without the benefit of precedents, rules or established standards and help to explain why the states' policies and practices differ so dramatically.

Very well put.  As court records move from practical obscurity to widespread electronic availablity, state court systems are struggling to deal with these challenges.  West Virginia is one of the states where budgetary concerns and difficulty integrating legacy systems has prevented widespread deployment of online court records, but we're moving in that direction, polishing an RFI for a statewide uniform judicial application. 

4:13:26 PM