Mugged by a Mugshot: Right of publicity claims, extortion claims, state-level attempts to deal with for-profit databases whose claims to promote the public interest are made somewhat less plausible by their willingness to pull down the pictures of those who pay, free speech arguments, and–perhaps most significant in the long run–the role of intermediaries.  Though this isn’t the first story on these websites by far, when the NYT started asking questions for what’s evidently a feature story, Google quickly responded that it was changing its algorithm, and MasterCard and PayPal dumped the sites.  (No word on Visa.)  I’m no fan of these websites, but I do wonder: what differentiates the intermediaries’ actions here from what happened to Wikileaks?