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Court Records Should Be Free

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Re: Court Records Should Be Free

#71

Post by BobbyTables2 »

tptacek wrote: post #42

The discourse over PACER fees recapitulates a very common public policy conundrum, and we should all be more thoughtful about discussing it. In the municipality where I live, we're statutorily required to replace lead service lines[†] within the next 5-10 years (I forget how many). The municipality replaces the trunk lines, and homeowners are required to replace the last hop at their own (significant) expense. Natura…

The two aren’t quite identical.

The municipality could service all the homes and pay for it with taxes, probably using their own people or a negotiated contract.

The private (and usually no -savvy) individual has much less negotiating power and is going to get taken to the cleaners by a plumber. Three houses in a street are likely to have 3 different plumbers on 3 different dates.

It’s just like that the cost per square foot to pave a single driveway vs the entire sidewalk or foundations for a whole neighborhood.

Re: Court Records Should Be Free

#72

Post by divbzero »

tptacek wrote: post #42

The discourse over PACER fees recapitulates a very common public policy conundrum, and we should all be more thoughtful about discussing it. In the municipality where I live, we're statutorily required to replace lead service lines[†] within the next 5-10 years (I forget how many). The municipality replaces the trunk lines, and homeowners are required to replace the last hop at their own (significant) expense. Natura…

I agree with the analysis of lead service lines, but serving static files is lot cheaper than replacing underground pipes—so much cheaper that I think it’s qualitatively different.

Re: Court Records Should Be Free

#73

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft »

gucci-on-fleek wrote: post #58
tptacek wrote: post #42

The discourse over PACER fees recapitulates a very common public policy conundrum, and we should all be more thoughtful about discussing it. In the municipality where I live, we're statutorily required to replace lead service lines[†] within the next 5-10 years (I forget how many). The municipality replaces the trunk lines, and homeowners are required to replace the last hop at their own (significant) expense. Natura…

> Overwhelmingly, PACER is used by attorneys, who are generally well-compensated professionals with a whole host of protectionist policies insulating them from market forces. Court records can, of course, be made "free". But nothing is actually free. To make those records free, you have to take money from the general fund, which means the tax payments of people who have nothing to do with the legal profession are...…

Lawyers don't use PACER. They'll have a LexisNexis or Westlaw terminal. That gets them all of the rulings and so forth, but annotated.

PACER is more or less journalists, activists, and so forth.

The fees PACER charges doesn't reflect the cost that the government bears to make it available (it's much higher). It's a poor service, seemingly designed to discourage its own use. And the bureaucracy within the court system obligated to provide it seems to feel that it's far more than a burden but even an intrusion into matters that the courts would keep from the public, were it allowed.

Re: Court Records Should Be Free

#74

Post by gucci-on-fleek »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #73
gucci-on-fleek wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Overwhelmingly, PACER is used by attorneys, who are generally well-compensated professionals with a whole host of protectionist policies insulating them from market forces. Court records can, of course, be made "free". But nothing is actually free. To make those records free, you have to take money from the general fund, which means the tax payments of people who have nothing to do with the legal profession are...…

Lawyers don't use PACER. They'll have a LexisNexis or Westlaw terminal. That gets them all of the rulings and so forth, but annotated. PACER is more or less journalists, activists, and so forth. The fees PACER charges doesn't reflect the cost that the government bears to make it available (it's much higher). It's a poor service, seemingly designed to discourage its own use. And the bureaucracy within the court system…

> They'll have a LexisNexis or Westlaw terminal. That gets them all of the rulings and so forth, but annotated.

So I'm not familiar with this area at all, but aren't only the major rulings annotated? Based off of this sibling comment [0] (which I have no idea is correct or not), PACER is mainly used for exhibits, briefs, and motions, and I wouldn't expect for LexisNexis and Westlaw to annotate these.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48605601

Re: Court Records Should Be Free

#75

Post by manyatoms »

ipython wrote: post #47
tptacek wrote: post #42

The discourse over PACER fees recapitulates a very common public policy conundrum, and we should all be more thoughtful about discussing it. In the municipality where I live, we're statutorily required to replace lead service lines[†] within the next 5-10 years (I forget how many). The municipality replaces the trunk lines, and homeowners are required to replace the last hop at their own (significant) expense. Natura…

The problem is - we are all required to abide by the law. And the law is at least partially determined by precedent established by previous court cases. But those cases are behind a paywall. Yes everything costs money. But we expect that the government would provide services for the greater good of its citizens. I can step foot in some of the greatest museums in the world for free in downtown dc. As a citizen I can g…

> The problem is - we are all required to abide by the law. And the law is at least partially determined by precedent established by previous court cases. But those cases are behind a paywall.

In 2026, this is similar to having secret laws, as your LLM might not have a subscription or know to tell you to get one

Re: Court Records Should Be Free

#76

Post by qingcharles »

cdolan wrote: post #7

courtlistener and the Recap program fill a vital niche at the moment. Recap takes any PACER document you purchase and automatically adds it to CourtListener for others to see/download. Hopefully it will become obsolete soon!

I've been burning up every cent of my free $30/month PACER credit liberating important filings into RECAP for the last five years. The last year and a half of this administration has made this task very hard to keep up with as there are so many federal lawsuits and criminal cases. I just screwed up and accidentally went over my free limit so now I owe a real pound of flesh to the courts. Maybe my debt will be wiped out when the new Act is effective?

Re: Court Records Should Be Free

#77

Post by qingcharles »

tptacek wrote: post #44
cdolan wrote: post #7

courtlistener and the Recap program fill a vital niche at the moment. Recap takes any PACER document you purchase and automatically adds it to CourtListener for others to see/download. Hopefully it will become obsolete soon!

For the most part, RECAP just eliminates inconvenience. For matters of widespread interest, RECAP saves thousands of people from having to make PACER accounts. But the stuff that ends up on RECAP, for obvious reasons, tends to be the small minority of cases that the public is interested in, and for the most part that content is practically (sometimes literally) free. I think RECAP rules a lot and I have the plugins e…

Agree -- RECAP is 100x easier to use than the official PACER. Plus RECAP is Google/LLM indexed, whereas PACER being paywalled means nothing is indexed, and their search is also annoying. In fact the whole PACER site has that real 1993 "I wrote this in perl with cgi-bin" feel.

Re: Court Records Should Be Free

#78

Post by qingcharles »

user3939382 wrote: post #30

> the public should not have to pay to read the law This goes back to Hammurabi. These decisions are the law. We pay tax dollars to create all this and even if we didn’t, if we’re held to these rulings we need to be able to read them.

Statutes are free by law. There was a case a few years ago that definitively affirmed this. A lot of counties and municipalities have zoning laws and building codes, but they don't have staff to write them, so they buy stock model codes from a corporation that writes them. These venues were then telling their citizens they couldn't give them a free copy, they had to buy them.

Someone got sued for copyright infringement for giving away a copy of the statues, but they ultimately won.

See e.g., Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org, Inc. (2020) & Veeck v. Southern Building Code Congress Int'l (5th Cir. 2002).

Re: Court Records Should Be Free

#79

Post by ozozozd »

BobbyTables2 wrote: post #71
tptacek wrote: post #42

The discourse over PACER fees recapitulates a very common public policy conundrum, and we should all be more thoughtful about discussing it. In the municipality where I live, we're statutorily required to replace lead service lines[†] within the next 5-10 years (I forget how many). The municipality replaces the trunk lines, and homeowners are required to replace the last hop at their own (significant) expense. Natura…

The two aren’t quite identical. The municipality could service all the homes and pay for it with taxes, probably using their own people or a negotiated contract. The private (and usually no -savvy) individual has much less negotiating power and is going to get taken to the cleaners by a plumber. Three houses in a street are likely to have 3 different plumbers on 3 different dates. It’s just like that the cost per squ…

Exactly what I was going to say. And exactly what’s intended: for someone to make money.

Re: Court Records Should Be Free

#80

Post by p_j_w »

anon373839 wrote: post #60
EMIRELADERO wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Material that shouldn't be published for any reason is already subject to a sealing process. What else is needed?

Just one example: PII of third parties is frequently attached in evidence supporting motions. In theory, careful redaction should be done, but it isn't, and those third parties aren't around to assert their privacy interests.

So wealthy people can go ahead and violate your privacy interests, but not really anyone else? I’m sorry, but this is a bad answer to the problem. The solution is to fix the redaction process, not to go with some awkward indirect solution that creates its own set of problems WITHOUT solving the original stated problem.
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