About that Conservative attempt to delete the past from the internet…

PR Week has today run my views on the Conservative Party’s efforts to excise the past from the internet:

Responding as a Liberal Democrat Newswire editor and former Lib Dem staffer, Pack said: “It’s a classic example of the difficulty of removing content from the internet, and how it often attracts more attention than the content itself would have done.

“If you look at the volume of media coverage, it will have reached more people than the old content would have been seen by. And that content would have always been accessible to journalists and the opposition.”

The removal of the material, which dates from 2000 until the party came to power in May 2010, was reported by computing trade magazine Computer Weekly on Tuesday and triggered a rash of bad press.

As Guido has pointed out, Labour ain’t in too great a position to criticise:

Labour have done exactly what they attacked the Tories for: trying to block access to embarrassing speeches, press releases from before the last election.

[Ed’s note: remember to delete this story before doing any mass deleting in future.]