Slashdot Mirror
Firefox Plugin Liberates Paywalled Court Records
Timothy B. Lee writes "If you want to access federal court records, you're often forced to use PACER, a cumbersome, paywalled Web site run by the federal judiciary. My colleagues and I at Princeton's Center for IT Policy have released a new Firefox extension called RECAP that allows users to automatically upload the documents they download from PACER into a public archive hosted by the Internet Archive. It also saves users money by automatically notifying them if a document they're searching for is available for free from the public archive. Over time, we hope to build a comprehensive, free repository of federal court records that's available to everyone."
Example:
Perhaps most shocking are items such as the list submitted by D.C. Attorney Ronald L. Drake who decided he wasn't being paid on time by the D.C. schools and thus raised his rates retroactively from $390/hour to $425/hour, submitting as evidence the names, home addresses, ages and social security numbers of 67 children.
I hope every judge in the District of Columbia knows about that. What's even more humorous is that Carl Malamud includes a hyperlink in that letter to FindLaw in case you wish to contact Mr. Drake.
And the response informs Malamud that it's taken care of with the SSNs redacted and the documents removed from public display. I wonder how long public.resource.org and Scribd have to demonstrate their usefulness before federal court documents are uploaded there by default in addition to being available through the court?
On a related note, I read in a Google blog that you can now release your works under Creative Commons on books.google.com and they happen to have Carl Malamud's A World's Fair for the Global Village available for download. And if you wish to release your works under the Creative Commons, Google will host them.
My work here is dung.
I don't understand why there is a paywall in the first place. I thought all government records should be available for free through a FOIA request.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
I can sort of understand when the government charges for something that takes human effort. For example, patent and copyright searches through records which have not been digitized. They are simply covering extra labor costs which can be very time consuming- but when it's all online anyway, how dare they charge us for it?
http://twitter.com/OLDTELEGRAM
I had to get a PACER account when I filed bankruptcy, so that I could monitor my case and download the documents related to it. It's ridiculous how it works -- they charge you $0.03 for every page that you download. It's like going to the local library and paying to use the copy machine, except in this case it's completely electronic and costs them no consumables. Why are they allowed to charge so much for access to the public record? It seems like a reasonable amount to ask if you went to the local court house and started printing hard copies but $0.03/page for a PDF document? Really?
Kudos to the people who came up with this idea. Now if we only had a free way to search case law. You can access the current Federal and State statues from the relevant Government websites but you have no easy way to do the same for case law, which is at least as important under our legal system. Most of the services to do this are paid ones (Lexis Nexis), I've yet to come across a decent free one.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Because subverting the will of the judiciary always turns out well.
Nothing for 6-digit uids?
Bypassing one of the few Federal programs designed to pay for itself via fees from people who can afford to pay them.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
If someone could RECAP the court transcript of the recent i4i v. Microsoft case, that would be very useful.
http://en.swpat.org/wiki/I4i_v._Microsoft
http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Talk:I4i_v._Microsoft
Thanks.
Please help publicise swpat.org - the software patents wiki
I'm a US citizen and pay thousands of dollars a year in Federal taxes. Why should I pay *more* to access public court documents from the Federal courts? If the issue is the costs of hosting the documents on servers, this project, by its mere existence, shows that there are people who will gladly shoulder the cost of hosting the documents, so others can access them for free. If the issue is the cost of having people redact documents where necessary, and scan them in (in the situations where the documents aren't electronic to begin with), that should just be part of the costs of court clerks, which our tax dollars pay for *anyhow*.
Speaking as a lawyer who spends an inordinate amount of time going through multiple PACER systems to download filings, this is good news, however it would probably take a few years for this to be useful for most lawyers. And outside the more prominent cases the chances are slim that someone else has used this to get a document you want.
And the interface itself isn't THAT cumbersome, though it could be slightly better (for example, it doesn't allow searching by judge, which is annoying when you're trying to see how the judge you're before ruled before). Also each district has its own independent PACER, which always seemed somewhat inefficient to me.
Bypassing one of the few Federal programs designed to pay for itself via fees from people who can afford to pay them.
By that reasoning, they should charge $100 per page then? After all, the folks who access them can afford them, right?
These are court documents - something that should be monitored by the public. The same goes for any legislative actions. To charge for access is to restrict access - it adds a barrier to viewing them, just like FOIA, with all of it's hoops one has to jump through, restricts access in a way. Government needs to be transparent and these back hand ways of obfuscating what the system is doing does nothing in that regard. I am NOT saying that was what the intention of these charges were, I am saying that is the effect of said charges.
You can't grep videos.
Please help publicise swpat.org - the software patents wiki
Half the people here claim the cost of scanning the document, etc is why PACER charges.
This misses a very important point: This cost was already paid for when you submitted the document to the court.
Lawyers and others filing documents with the court costs money. A lot of money (relatively).
*This* money is used to pay for scanning/digitizing/etc the documents, as well as hosting them, so that people involved with the cases (as well as the court, etc) can access the documents electronically. In fact, plenty of courts now *require* electronic filing.
PACER charging on the other side to retrieve the document has absolutely nothing to do with the cost of digitizing, hosting, or anything else.
It's just money that goes to a slush fund for the federal judiciary (Carl Malamud has calculated how much money is there if you google for it), not money necessary to pay for the system.
As a lawyer who has used Pacer for many years, my first reaction was the same. Why am I paying for something with no marginal cost that should be free in the first place? However, look at the alternative: driving down to the courthouse and making physical photocopies at even greater expense.
I then learned that they are using the money to build their IT infrastructure to allow even better access. Of course, they will probably never remove the fees, but $.03 is really quite cheap compared to say, Lexis or Westlaw which charge about $100 per day to access their data without a subscription.
Right now, it is optional for lawyers (some courts even charge you to do it) to file electronic versions of your documents. Eventually, all lawyers will file electronic versions of their documents, and access will be better.
I support public.resource.org which is attempting to make all government laws free online.
The wheels of justice move slowly but surely.
When we have this for scientific journals, it may be important everyone in the world. As it is, litigation happy americans are the ones who benefit from this.
If the system relies on my uploading documents that I downloaded from the court, how does it authenticate the validity of those documents? Suppose I'm a patent troll lawyer. What's to keep me (aside from non-technical disciplinary stuff) from downloading documents that have unfavorable rulings to patet troll companies, then modifying them to make it look like the precident is different, and uploading them to RECAP? It seems like this could be a good way to derail the competition.
There is no video of Federal court proceedings, it's prohibited.
In light of this, please allow me to rephrase bogaboga's comment:
Video of the proceedings would be like icing on the cake! Why has the law prohibiting video recording of Federal court proceedings not been repealed? Any hopes for this?
What about a donation system whereby one can pay to have the people running this download some documents? Three bucks would be three hundred documents. There could be options on which documents they'd like downloaded. What about a Make a Request section? They could even handle it like Miro handle's donations and put your name up when people see the document. "This document has been liberated by XXX." Maybe these aren't good ideas for various reasons and I just don't know enough to know why. Just throwing them out there.
This is wonderful news. Now I can save $2.40 on my various sexual harassment lawsuits.
If you have something that you dont want anyone to know, maybe you shouldnt be doing it in the first place -Eric Schmidt
hese sort of redaction failures are important to know about; however, Malamud's letter to the clerk of court betrays a severe deficiency in his understanding of the courts and how they work. The Clerk of Court cannot redact filings. It just does not work that way. Filers must (and are required to) redact filings. The Clerk of Court must also accept any filing. S/he can't turn it away because of a defect in form or substance. The most the clerk can do is notify chambers (the judge) of the issue. The judge can then order the filing sealed as well as a redacted filing from the originator of the document.
In addition, contrary to everything you are reading in this thread, court opinions are free on PACER. Anything that sets forth the reasoned opinion of the court is not charged. Most PACER fees come from people reading mundane scheduling orders and routine motions made by counsel. Yes -- these should be (and are) available to the public. They are even free if you visit the courthouse -- but the system that runs them did not appear out of thin air. PACER fees *do not* pay staff salaries or local court operational costs. They are used to maintain the infrastructure and development of the Case Management and Electronic Case Files system. That infratructure is complex and the software systems used to run and maintain the systems is under constant development to handle new requirements -- be they legal requirements or operational requirements.
The biggest problem with Malamud's project (and this plugin) is not the archival of public documents. I don't think anyone has a problem with that. The biggest problem is that it is woefully incomplete and someone might be under the mistaken impression that their project is anywhere near what Malamud claims it is. Their "vast repository' of documents contains fewer that 20% of the number of filings in one medium to large court out of 96 district courts (let alone Bankruptcy courts, which have much higher volume). The amount of actual data available from PACER dwarfs their available resources and is growing at a geometric pace compared to their relatively static growth. Take a look at their repository and just imagine how much has changed since this small slice of the whole pie was carved out. There is no way a few public users can keep up with hundreds of attorneys filing thousands of documents each day in all these courts. It cannot be done that way -- and they should make it clear that this is resource is nothing more than a tiny window on the whole.
PACER gets its fee for every page downloaded from it. The material is public domain. You could go down to the courthouse, photograph the pages, and put them up on the Web without paying a penny. This project reduces the load on PACER in proportion to the reduction in PACER revenue. What's wrong with that? And why do you assume that only the rich need Federal court documents?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
This is wonderful news. Now I can save $2.40 on my various sexual harassment lawsuits.
It's not the amount that matters here, it's the principle. Public records should be public, and by that I mean freely available and easily searchable. And "easily searchable" is actually an intrenational standard in the age of Google.
... especially tolls, which are often wildly inefficient. When I lived in the SF Bay area, I would often wait a good half hour to pay a $4.00 toll. With two people in the car whose time is worth $40/hr each, the cost in time of paying the toll is 10 X the actual toll.
Raise the gas tax a little to cover all tolls and I would be much happier!
Expected time to finish is 1 hour and 60 minutes.
There is no way a few public users can keep up with hundreds of attorneys filing thousands of documents each day in all these courts.
And that right there, is a very sad fact that should never have been allowed to exist.
@Mindless Drivel: 100% of Twitter posts ever Tweeted.
So we should stop allowing people to file documents with the courts? Or should we stop allowing documents to be available for public use? Which "fact" are you referring to?
The thing is, pacer records are intended to be public and supposed to be free. Lieberman has asked about this before. The creation of documents online was supposed to make them free eventually, specifically.
I would rather eliminate the res judicata that forces attorneys to unload a full larder of motions at trial just to make sure nothing gets locked out at appeal.
What the fuck?
Next thing you know, a firewall will be used to prevent actual fires.
Wait... Still, wtf?
how is babby formed?
It would be wonderful if all county, state and city records could also be easily accessed on non governmental sites. One effect would be that the paranoid could stop blaming the government for compiling records on them. Now they could blame entirely free and separate entities for compiling files. I'll also bet that such easily available information would reveal quite a few criminals activities.
Public services should be allowed to charge to cover the cost of providing the service. I don't mind paying to get into my favorite hiking parks for example.
But what RECAP is doing is an attempt to replace the for-pay service with a for-free service. RECAP obviously does not operate for "free", but if it operates much more cheaply than PACER--entirely possible--I see nothing wrong with them eliminating the fees! One hopes that the government will notice, and eliminate the costly program in favor of the cheap one.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
This is a fantastic step. Kudos to everyone involved. eldavojohn: resource.org is simply amazing. everyone should know about that site and its [many!] works.
SJ on en:
So Juror's and witness don't get harrased.
Witnesses might slightly, but from what I saw of a widely broadcast trial of an American football player in a California state court over a decade ago, the camera was placed close to the jury box, and jurors were safely out of view.
Growing at a "geometric pace".. so it's five feet bigger than is was?
"I would rather eliminate the res judicata that forces attorneys to unload a full larder of motions at trial just to make sure nothing gets locked out at appeal."
That is just plain silly. If you didn't have res judicata, the attorneys would file even more paper in multiple lawsuits instead of just one lawsuit. Furthermore, the other side would never have the relief of knowing that the case is really over.
You don't want causes of action to be ZOMBIES that are never dead! You want finality!!!
It's written in the summary (yes, the summary, not the article) that it's an extension, not a plugin. There Is A Difference, You Know.
Are you serious? If something is filed and becomes public record, a lawyer can freely discuss the contents of that document. After all, it is a matter of public record. This system only deals with public records. Your logic makes no sense whatsoever.
Furthermore, it won't be their own cases which get uploaded through this system. A lawyer isn't going to go to a public warehouse to obtain court records that he already has. He's going to go to an online warehouse to study previous cases to understand precedents and to strengthen his case. Lawyers are constantly studying other cases, making them good candidates to upload lots and lots of documents through this system.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
Is that really such a bad thing?
Let me put it this way: LET THEM FALSIFY THE DOCUMENTS! When (WHEN) it gets out that some particular party--let's assume the RIAA--has falsified documents in the hopes that it'd sway public opinion, I can't imagine that future proceedings would be all that favorable. Judges may be impartial, but they're also human. Don't tell me for an instant that a justice who knows that the particular party bringing a case before him has falsified the documents of another court is going to look upon them with anything other than suspicion. Heck, there might even be some laws on the books about falsifying or misrepresenting public records.
Regardless, the RIAA might be bloodsuckers, but I'd hope they wouldn't do something that stupid. Swaying public opinion by misrepresenting facts is a very dangerous bridge to cross. You only get one chance, and if it blows up, you're in the drink.
He who has no
Comment removed based on user account deletion
True, which is why that elimination needs to be paired with a loser pays system.
I dunno but I'm not much of a fan of finality if it means that miscarriages of justice get set in stone.
The appeals process is a nice compromise except for the fact that even THEY are overburdened enough and often give the bird to any cases they don't care about.
To be clear, I only think that cases should be revisited when the one who wants to do so bears the cost and burden of proof.
Possible refund if he proves he was right.
And until such time as he proves his case, the other side doesn't even get bothered.
How does the other side not even get bothered without also granting them a chance to defend themselves?
Give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day, but teach a man to phish...