Steve, I wanted to speak up a little in defence of the County Clerks/Recorders in regards to their selling us out with the bulk transfer. Under the laws in most states, they are bullied into this under threat of expensive lawsuits. 

 The laws regarding costs of FOIA copies were written before anyone could have invisioned a counties entire collection might someday be carried off in someones shirt pocket. In most states the laws are written so that the County Clerks have to produce the records at cost of reproduction. For paper copies this shook out to around 50 cents to a dollar per page in most states. The cost of reproducing electronic records is ten thousand pages for $15 on a CD or a hundred thousand pages for a dollar by USB cable.

Until the law catches up with the technology this is the facts of the situation facing every County Clerk or recorder who makes the mistake of digitizing the county records.

Some would disagree with you about the security of the Virginia Records. Choicepoint made the same claim of security for their "public" records. The identity theft ring operating out of Nigeria found it laughably easy to get around. Even before anyone understood the potential of the Internet the California DMV claimed they had a secure subscriber system that protected their citizens until their electronic "secure subscriber" system cost Rebecca Shaeffer her life. The result was the Driver Protection Act.

You are correct, the information is public. Anyone can and has always been able to view it at the local repository. As they should be able to. Until the Internet, no one could sit in an Internet cafe in Pakistan and read the information you intended to share only with your own community.