Forget diamonds. Mug shots, apparently, are forever.

At least that's the experience of folks who are arrested, thanks to Internet sites that automatically download the photos from county jail websites and put them online.

Being booked isn't the same as being convicted, so even those who have been acquitted or had their crimes expunged have to play whack-a-mole online or forever explain to potential employers why their jail mugs are all over the web.

State lawmakers may trip up the online mug shot industry by requiring anyone who wants a copy of a mug shot to trot down to the county jail in person.

, said the aim is to stop websites like

.

"If you make it so that a person has to go down there to make that in-person request," Anfuso said, "it's going to impact the profit model for these predatory businesses."

Anfuso drafted the language for

, which is co-sponsored by two Portland Democrats, Reps.

and

.

A representative for Busted declined to comment on the proposed bill, which hasn't been scheduled for a hearing yet.

Williamson said she's hoping the bill will move forward. "My big thing is, things live forever on the Internet."

According to Bustedmugshots.com, the company will remove mug shots for free if the charges that led to an arrest were dismissed, or if the person in the mug shot was underage at the time of the arrest, found not guilty or died.

Otherwise, a request to remove a mug shot is subject to a $98 "administrative fee."

Mug shot sites have proliferated, each with its own rules about removal. Their ubiquity has spawned another website, Removemymug.com, which offers to remove one mug shot for $99 from a specific web domain. To remove mug shots from multiple sites, the website charges up to $899.

Anfuso said one of his clients paid to remove a mug shot from one site only to find it pop up on others.

Mugshot websites use software algorithms that scour the Internet and collect mug shots posted online, so if a mug winds up on one site, it'll probably be on the others soon enough.

Anfuso said his clients in Washington County don't have online mug shot problems because the

.

While records clerks at the county distribute mug shots electronically and free of charge to media on request, members of the public have to go to the jail in person and pay $4.

Anfuso's bill is modeled on that policy. As written, there's no fee and it wouldn't allow jails to make exceptions for media. Every request would have to be made in person.

Lawmakers in other states have taken up the online mug shot cause. A law passed in Utah requires anyone who requests a mug shot to pledge not to post it online and then require a fee to remove it. A similar bill was introduced in Georgia and an even stricter version was introduced in Florida.

The Florida bill triggered a backlash from journalists, who worried that provisions could chill news reporting.

The same concerns are being raised by the press in Oregon. Thomas Gallagher, a lobbyist for the Oregon Newspaper Publishers Association said he thinks the bill is dead.

"We hope never to see it get a hearing," Gallagher said.

But Williamson said she's open to a revision to address concerns from media outlets. Her goal isn't to interfere with newspapers or television stations, she said. She just wants to make sure that mug shot websites can't automatically download mug shots.

In order to stop that, she's trying to require that a mug shot request be made by a person, not by a machine. "I just want to make sure there's a step that a human has to take."

--Christian Gaston