Great job Richard. Do you have or plan to have an API avaialble? We (Kagi Search) would like to use this.
Show HN: Full text search on 630M US court cases
261–270 of 289 posts
Re: Show HN: Full text search on 630M US court cases
#262Cool project, it led me to a patent filing which is also a part of court cases i guess.
Anyway, now i know someone have tried to patent a scooter that looks like a firetruck.
Re: Show HN: Full text search on 630M US court cases
#263Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not a lawyer: In the absence of a reporting mechanism for issues like this, I'd suggest at least a notice / message alongside results to indicate that they may not reflect the current state of official and amended records. (I think you may be wise to take this issue fairly seriously; there's a risk of people considering the search engine to be an authority in itself -- which, to be fair, is already a risk for any…
This is stated in simple language on the terms page, which is linked at the top/middle of every page. You have to decide between putting the same text on every page vs. a high visibility place vs. a low visibility place. I opted for 2nd to make sure it's clear.
It’s good that this is listed in the terms, but this raises two concerns:
1) People don’t read terms. Should they? Yes. Do they? No.
2) This language is more like a disclaimer than a term of use. I would not assume that disclaimers about the accuracy of the result would be found in the terms.
So yes, the terms link is prominent, but no, I don’t think it addresses this issue.
Re: Show HN: Full text search on 630M US court cases
#264Wow. What a resource. Do a search for "cDNA patent" and read how many things the Supreme Court can get wrong in just a few paragraphs. (Hint: cDNA is not "composite DNA").
Re: Show HN: Full text search on 630M US court cases
#265Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do most people read and comprehend terms pages before using the information they discover from search engines? (I don't know)
Absolutely not. A vanishingly tiny percent ever click on the terms link.
Indeed, so the only good option would be to only search public records.
Everything else should not be searchable.
Re: Show HN: Full text search on 630M US court cases
#266Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Argued and Submitted June 3, 1981. John von Neumann died in 1957. The name is a bit generic, so many results show up. Hence I wished there was a way to limit search to a range of years.
Good call, now I'm embarrassed. I should've known that. Funny how the mind works. I knew he died in his 50's and was involved in the Manhattan project but somehow was content lumping him in with all the other scientists from Operation Paperclip and using loose math that 1981 was possible.
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Re: Show HN: Full text search on 630M US court cases
#267Do you really need to include divorce cases?
Re: Show HN: Full text search on 630M US court cases
#268You better not earn any money on this... https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/05/all-of-mugshots-...
Can you explain your thought process? How is that related?
Not the original poster but: Your service costs money to run. You're not, so far as I can tell, a recognized non-profit doing this out of the goodness of your heart. Given that you're not running ads, all the monetization angles are yucky.
The search query stream of your site alone is immediately monetizable for targeting by "legitimate businesses" who sell "reputation management services." (People who expect to find records are searching for their own names. People who suspect others might have records are searching for those names. Source: see every second comment on this topic) Notably, nothing in your terms suggests this isn't already your business model - you don't need to collect or retain personal information about the visitors to your site to monetize the search query stream. In fact, it's probably "better" not to collect PII, because then you can claim that the search queries are "just strings the visitor provided voluntarily" and that you have no idea whose names those are.
Also: your dataset is littered with records that are properly under seal, including juvenile records. You are NOT relieved of potential liability for disseminating these just because they're included in your dragnet, should they be found through your service and used in a way that causes actual damages.
I'd strongly caution anyone against using this site at all, much less searching names. This site is plausably an input to an extortion machine at scale.
Re: Show HN: Full text search on 630M US court cases
#269Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's not true. Court records used to be accessible in person only. You would have to be motivated to find anything. This puts everyone's past and often forgotten transgressions on display. This might look cool or even useful to some, but it's straight up immoral.
You and others are essentially arguing that we should put artificial barriers in place for accessing information that is public as a matter of law. Arguably there is information that's public today only because the circumstances at the time when that decision was made were different. But the solution would be to make less information public if it's a problem. Not to tell people they can only access this information w…
I disagree. That is an excellent throttling mechanism. Keeps records open but preserves a modicum of privacy.
It's another topic if court records should be public at all, but I gather that's a pretty integral element of US judicial system.
Re: Show HN: Full text search on 630M US court cases
#270Earlier quoted context omitted.
Since it collects personally identifiable information (at least IP addresses, but it's not clear where it stops) this requires special treatment under GDPR: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Analytics#Privacy
Why does an unmonetized website about US court cases, presumably targeted towards Americans, need to care about GDPR?
Who says this website is unmonetized? The search query stream alone is very valuable.