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Attacking a Pay Wall That Hides Public Court Filings (nytimes.com)
The federal judiciary has built an imposing pay wall around its court filings, charging a preposterous 10 cents a page for electronic access to what are meant to be public records. A pending lawsuit could help tear that wall down. From a report: The costs of storing and transmitting data have plunged, approaching zero. By one estimate, the actual cost of retrieving court documents, including secure storage, is about one half of one ten-thousandth of a penny per page. But the federal judiciary charges a dime a page to use its service, called Pacer (for Public Access to Court Electronic Records). The National Veterans Legal Services Program and two other nonprofit groups filed a class action in 2016 seeking to recover what they said were systemic overcharges. "Excessive Pacer fees inhibit public understanding of the courts and thwart equal access to justice, erecting a financial barrier that many ordinary citizens are unable to clear," they wrote. The suit accuses the judicial system of using the fees it charges as a kind of slush fund, spending the money to buy flat-screen televisions for jurors, to finance a study of the Mississippi court system and to send notices in bankruptcy proceedings.
No, I will stay here and get things fixed.
Good luck. Before you try too hard to "go back to the good ole' days" when America didn't care about profit, you might want to read some history books. The Jamestown Colony was a profit seeking enterprise. We practiced plantation slavery for 350 years. There was never a time when America didn't care about profit, and "public works" at the federal level barely existed until FDR's New Deal in the 1930s.
In 2014, PACER collected $145 million in fees, so they served up about 1.4 *billion* pages. That's a few more than the one million pages in your scenario.
https://www.wired.com/2016/05/...