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Court Records Should Be Free

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Re: Court Records Should Be Free

#141

Post by adampunk »

tptacek wrote: post #138
adampunk wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but 1: We already pay for the fixed costs and 2: the real marginal cost--however you want to measure it--is still closer to 0 than 10 cents.

No, it pays for costs unrelated to serving static content . It's a use tax. The fees do not entirely have to do with paying for a website.

That’s right. And use taxes can and should be calibrated to not just collect money but achieve public policy objectives. If the real marginal cost were close to 10 cents a page, we might be able to argue that funding the system other ways would be more distortionary but it’s not. We have decided with lots of static file services (including Supreme Court opinions) that the right use tax is 0, because zero-cost access is a desirable quality in itself.

Re: Court Records Should Be Free

#142

Post by tptacek »

hn_acker wrote: post #129
tptacek wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really, no. Medicare wildly overpays for everything compared to the rest of the world.

Medicare covers only a minority of the population but (and?) relies heavily on the general US private healthcare system. At minimum, Medicare cost is affected by high drug prices (perpetuated by lobbying-influenced government avoidance of price controls), relatively high coverage denials (which Congress and the executive branch refuse to regulate), and lack of vision or dental coverage unless people use "Medicare" Ad…

Drug prices are less than 10% of all US health care spending. Drive all drug prices to zero dollars and we get a grocery store circular discount on total health costs.

Re: Court Records Should Be Free

#144

Post by lukeschlather »

tptacek wrote: post #132
lukeschlather wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We know where all the money in this system is: it's in LexisNexis and Westlaw. Each of them has revenue over $3B, individually. Presumably they have some lesser-known competitors. PACER fees are $150M. What percentage of PACER fees are paid by LexisNexis and Westlaw anyway in the course of their data ingestion? I'm not sure it really matters, we could simply restructure with a new tax on value-add services like Lexis…

Wait why are we taxing LexisNexis? Making PACER free makes sense (though, again: doing that is regressive); it's a government-run service that is the system of record for court filings.

You asserted that we need the money PACER fees bring in - taxing businesses like LexisNexis seems like a way to get the same kind of money that wouldn't be regressive, if we really need to replace that revenue, and it comes from more or less the same place, without being paid by people who can't afford it.

Re: Court Records Should Be Free

#145

Post by AnthonyMouse »

cucumber3732842 wrote: post #140
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When there are multiple providers their leverage is the ability to choose a different one. Consider food: You have to buy it or you die, yet everything from farmers to cafes operate on razor-thin margins, why? Because it's a commodity and the customer can go across the street. The prerequisite here, however, is that it's actually a competitive market. Two suppliers colluding or mirroring each other doesn't count.

That's the magic of it. You can't just conjure plumbers out of thin air, have some handyman do it, threaten to have your uncle from another state do it, etc, etc, because in order to get your magic piece of paper that says you've done the work the person doing it needs to be licensed by (an agency deputized by) the government and that intentionally takes time to constrain supply. If this were the government telling e…

Obviously the argument is that they shouldn't constrain the supply.

Re: Court Records Should Be Free

#146

Post by tptacek »

lukeschlather wrote: post #144
tptacek wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait why are we taxing LexisNexis? Making PACER free makes sense (though, again: doing that is regressive); it's a government-run service that is the system of record for court filings.

You asserted that we need the money PACER fees bring in - taxing businesses like LexisNexis seems like a way to get the same kind of money that wouldn't be regressive, if we really need to replace that revenue, and it comes from more or less the same place, without being paid by people who can't afford it.

The federal government can apply fee structures to services it offers. It cannot in fact just randomly point at things private organizations do and tax them.

Re: Court Records Should Be Free

#147

Post by mistrial9 »

bebe83939 wrote: post #117
mistrial9 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

other extreme case, California, where electricity costs are a large multiple of US averages, and the utility company owns military equipment. PG&E + minions monitor every connection, and charge to connect to the grid. High quality solar cannot be connected to the grid by regulation, not law, unless supervised by PG&E and minions. Naturally the regulations de facto equate to a monthly bill in a certain non-free range,…

> High quality solar > no matter how much effort the client site makes I doubt solar provides stable predictable current 24/7 with warranty amd penalties. That is the hard part, and what it takes to be "high quality". State sized grid is not a joke.

checkout "batteries" for new info

agree, state grid is no joke

Re: Court Records Should Be Free

#148

Post by lukeschlather »

tptacek wrote: post #146
lukeschlather wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You asserted that we need the money PACER fees bring in - taxing businesses like LexisNexis seems like a way to get the same kind of money that wouldn't be regressive, if we really need to replace that revenue, and it comes from more or less the same place, without being paid by people who can't afford it.

The federal government can apply fee structures to services it offers. It cannot in fact just randomly point at things private organizations do and tax them.

Really? Here are 3 examples, I'm not sure what you mean, Congress has extremely broad taxing authority. If what I suggest is unconstitutional (I'm curious to hear your justification for that) they could probably do it by putting terms of use on the PACER data, have a paid tier specifically for orgs that resell the data.

* Sports gambling excise tax: https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employe...

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_telephone_excise_tax

* Indoor tanning services: https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employe...

Re: Court Records Should Be Free

#149

Post by tptacek »

lukeschlather wrote: post #148
tptacek wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The federal government can apply fee structures to services it offers. It cannot in fact just randomly point at things private organizations do and tax them.

Really? Here are 3 examples, I'm not sure what you mean, Congress has extremely broad taxing authority. If what I suggest is unconstitutional (I'm curious to hear your justification for that) they could probably do it by putting terms of use on the PACER data, have a paid tier specifically for orgs that resell the data. * Sports gambling excise tax: https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employe... * ht…

Fair enough, I was thinking about what the government could do without major congressional action. But still, not going to happen. For many reasons, but one of them is constitutional.

WestLaw is expressive. It's tricky to do targeted taxes on expressive organizations. Pesky First Amendment.

The big reason nothing like this is going to happen is that there are like 40 nerds in the country that care about it, and then a huge majority of the population that is reasonably well served by the current compromise.

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