"It's a shame that everyone's title searching is inconvenienced but for once, there's a bigger issue than the title industry's convenience factor and warp speed."

True enough, Jan, but this is kind of like curing the disease by killing the patient.  Those records are public for a reason.  I like the idea of taking the documents off-line, and I'll grant you that SSNs shouldn't be on public documents, but this is overkill.  Bureaucracy leaves little room for common sense.

Regards,
Scott