> No it isn't. You can still do research and publish stories like 'John Doe, running for office, was convicted of littering 20 years ago...' You just won't be able to rely on a search engine to gather all that information for you; you'll have to research your subject a more old-fashioned way, looking through all the stories from the period.

I don't see that that's morally different from e.g. "you have to pay a $20 fine if you do this."

What if I have a hand-crafted artisanal search engine, like Yahoo Directory. Are those exempt from this law?