CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Debra Lashaway is realizing that the Internet never forgets.

Years after she was exonerated of a theft charge, she remains online through a lasting image of her arrest: a mug shot.

"It's an embarrassment,'' the suburban Toledo mother said. "I want to put my past behind me, but I can't. It's always there.''

The jail mug shot -- the photo that captures one of a person's lowest points — has become a lightning rod on the Internet. A class-action lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Toledo claims that companies that post the mug shots and charge money to take them down are nothing more than extortionists.

The suit says the companies are using people like Lashaway in a commercial way to benefit their business, a violation of Ohio's Right of Publicity Law. The suit contends that more than 250,000 people in Ohio have been harmed by web sites such as JustMugshots.com, BustedMugshots.com and mugshots.com.

"What they're doing with these web sites is akin to someone setting your house on fire and then charging you to put it out,'' said Scott Ciolek, an attorney representing Lashaway and others in the suit. "That's what these companies are doing. In my opinion, it is tantamount to extortion. That's also an infringement on publicity rights.''

In court documents, one of the companies in the suit says it simply publishes public documents, an act that is covered by the First Amendment, and any attempt to prevent the pictures from going online would be a form of censorship. It also says the real reason behind the service is "to provide notice of potentially dangerous neighbors and to assist law enforcement,'' the documents said.

Phillip Kaplan is part of a class-action lawsuit over the use of a booking photo that appeared on a web site that features mug shots.

"Booking photos are public records under Ohio law, available to anyone upon request and in many cases already published on the Internet by an arresting entity,'' according to documents filed by Citizens Information Associates. Court documents say it owns BustedMugshots.com and MugshotsOnline.com. "Their publication is protected by the First Amendment, no matter the use as uncomfortable as it may be.''

This week, The New York Times wrote about the online booking-shot industry in a Sunday story headlined, "Mugged by a Mug Shot.'' It detailed victims like Lashaway, who were cleared of any charges but whose booking photos remain online. One of Ciolek's other clients, Phillip Kaplan, lost his job based on the image, the attorney told The Plain Dealer.

Kaplan, like Lashaway, was never convicted. Lashaway was acquitted of the charges in 2011. The allegations were based on the word of a former boyfriend, Ciolek said. He added that after her name was cleared, she sued the former boyfriend and won a judgment against him.

But the acquittal and the judgment mean little to Lashaway, as her photo remains at Justmugshots.com. If she and others want their pictures taken down, they can pay the companies fees that, in some cases, can that reach hundreds of dollars.

In the midst of The New York Times' reporting on the story, Google made algorithm changes that appeared to demote the booking-shot web sites on search pages, according to the newspaper's account. Photos that once dominated the first pages of a Google search had been dropped down, the paper said.

A Google spokesperson sent a vague email to The Plain Dealer describing the situation. It was nearly verbatim to what it gave The New York Times: "Our team has been working for the past few months on an improvement to our algorithms to address this overall issue in a consistent way. The improvement recently rolled out.''

The Times reported that credit card companies and PayPal have stopped dealing with companies who run the mug-shot sites.

The online companies posting the mug shots obtain the photos much like newspaper reporters and investigators do: They file public records requests with counties across the country.

"Their actions are protected under the First Amendment in the same way your paper is protected,'' said Joseph Centrich, an attorney representing Citizens Information Associates.

He offered a company statement that said "we believe that it is the public's right to know about local arrests and crime, which is one of the main reasons the public records laws have determined these records must be disclosed to the public.''

Others aren't so sure.

"We're in a really interesting bind when you look at those sites,'' said Kelly McBride, an ethicist at the Poynter Institute, a journalism education center in St. Petersburg, Fla. "It is absolutely nefarious what they're doing. Those companies are not interested in the democratic reasons we as a society want public documents to be open. They're interested in profits.''

The federal lawsuit is in its early stages. Ciolek, the attorney for Lashaway and Kaplan, says the web sites' actions have nothing to do with the First Amendment. He said the companies use public documents as a lever to force people to pay to take the photos down.

"When you consider the number of people affected by these web sites, I would consider it one of the largest extortion rings ever perpetrated,'' Ciolek said.

The lawsuit says that Citizens Information Associates charges customers a monthly membership fee ranging between $12.95 and $19.95 to view photos that are displayed on BustedMugshots.com. The suit says BustedMugshots.com charges an image and name removal fee of about $178 "for rush removal of the booking photos from its web site.''

Citizens Information Associates also disputes that, saying it will "gladly and quickly remove arrest records and booking photos, free of charge, through our 'Free Removal' system for those who simply demonstrate that they have had their charges dismissed, been exonerated or are otherwise found not guilty, had their case sealed or expunged, was a legal minor in their state or if the person has passed away.''

Some expect only U.S. District Judge Jack Zouhary or a jury will decide whether the web sites help people or extort money from them. In the meantime, more documents and arguments are expected. Carl Tobias, a constitutional law professor at the University of Richmond, called the practice of placing mug shots online "revolting in terms of privacy.''

He said he likes the way the people suing the companies went about filing the lawsuit, "but I don't know whether it will persuade a judge,'' Tobias said.