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Court Records Should Be Free

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Re: Court Records Should Be Free

#31

Post by IncandescentGas »

monooso wrote: post #10
anon373839 wrote: post #8

I actually approve of the something closer to the status quo here. Court filings contain a lot of sensitive information about the litigants. It is one thing for the records to be publicly available, as they must be. It is a very different thing for every speck of material in them to be instantly available to anyone, anywhere, worldwide, for any purpose.

Isn't that basically the same as saying court filings should be available, but not to poor people?

No. They should be available for legit use cases and not available for data scrapers who will use it to facilitate algorithmic housing and employment discrimination. Especially not available for scammers who make mugshot extortion websites.

Re: Court Records Should Be Free

#33

Post by markhahn »

alexpotato wrote: post #13

So interesting point about things being public vs not: If congressional votes are private, you never REALLY know if your congressperson is actually voting in your best interests. You only see certain bills pass and if they are in your favor, you can probably make some assumptions if they voted or not. If the votes are public, now EVERYONE can see who they voted for. That sounds great! Then you realize that lobbyists…

what's the problem with everyone knowing how a rep votes? their voting should be a matter of record, not any form of leverage. the dumpsterfire of campaign finance is completely orthogonal (and also both important and simple to solve).

Re: Court Records Should Be Free

#34

Post by runako »

anon373839 wrote: post #12
nonethewiser wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then why do you think they should be public?

Because “publicly available with some friction” has a fundamentally different character than “indexed on Google/available to AI scrapers”. That type of information access wasn't even fathomable when the concept of public records was born. It enables a lot of uses where I would argue that the harms outweigh the benefits.

> indexed on Google/available to AI scrapers

Any fee that is acceptable for "normal use" is not high enough to deter the likes of Google or the big AI developers.

Google, a company that custom develops specialized automobiles to regularly drive ~all the streets in the world for the purposes of having imagery for a mapping app. Google, a company that (before it even got really rich), developed custom book-scanning technology to scan all the books it could acquire.

The big AI providers are in litigation now because even licensing terms that prevent use are no deterrent, they just stole the content they wanted to train their models.

The fee won't deter the cases you want, it will only harm the rest of us.

Re: Court Records Should Be Free

#36

Post by bsder »

IncandescentGas wrote: post #31
monooso wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that basically the same as saying court filings should be available, but not to poor people?

No. They should be available for legit use cases and not available for data scrapers who will use it to facilitate algorithmic housing and employment discrimination. Especially not available for scammers who make mugshot extortion websites.

Agreed. The issue isn't with individuals having access to the data but with aggregation of said data.

Re: Court Records Should Be Free

#37

Post by da_chicken »

david_shi wrote: post #29
jacobmarble wrote: post #28

PACER is for federal courts, price is $1 per page. I'm being sued in the State of Idaho, where the price of each page is $10.

How did you find out? Did they serve you like in the movies?

Well, there probably wasn't a concession stand.

Re: Court Records Should Be Free

#38

Post by jasonfarnon »

anon373839 wrote: post #12
nonethewiser wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then why do you think they should be public?

Because “publicly available with some friction” has a fundamentally different character than “indexed on Google/available to AI scrapers”. That type of information access wasn't even fathomable when the concept of public records was born. It enables a lot of uses where I would argue that the harms outweigh the benefits.

"Because “publicly available with some friction” has a fundamentally different character than “indexed on Google/available to AI scrapers”"

people have already forgotten the lessons of all those mugshots websites.

Re: Court Records Should Be Free

#39

Post by carlosjobim »

0x59 wrote: post #32

If anything it'd be free for approved partners. Think large legal firms, language model data collectors, etc

The entire reason to have a code of laws at all is to make justice a public matter. Otherwise we are back to blood feuds and might is right, if justice is to be a secret matter. Approved partner is any living and breathing human.

Re: Court Records Should Be Free

#40

Post by carlosjobim »

anon373839 wrote: post #8

I actually approve of the something closer to the status quo here. Court filings contain a lot of sensitive information about the litigants. It is one thing for the records to be publicly available, as they must be. It is a very different thing for every speck of material in them to be instantly available to anyone, anywhere, worldwide, for any purpose.

In these cases a heavily redacted sentence is made public, and it is common in sensitive cases to keep the names of victims and/or witnesses concealed. Think crimes involving children and such.
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