
Judge Declares Some Pacer Fees Illegal but Does Not Go Far Enough (2018) - peter_d_sherman
https://freedom-to-tinker.com/2018/04/01/judge-declares-some-pacer-fees-illegal-but-does-not-go-far-enough/
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peter_d_sherman
Excerpt:

"Five years ago, in a post called “Making Excuses for Fees on Electronic
Public Records,” I described my attempts to persuade the federal Judiciary to
stop charging for access to their web-based system, PACER (“Public Access to
Court Electronic Records”). Nearly every search, page view, and PDF download
from the system incurs a fee ranging from 10 cents to $3 (or, in some cases,
much more). _I chronicled the many excuses that the courts have provided for
charging what amounts to $150 million in fees every year for something that
should—by all reasonable accounts—not cost much to provide._ "

Related Paper:

"The Price of Ignorance: The Constitutional Cost of Fees for Access to
Electronic Public Court Records"

[https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3026779](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3026779)

Excerpt:

"This paper examines the _public’s interest_ in free electronic access to
federal court records and considers the relative strength of legal and policy
arguments to the contrary. Part I performs an accounting of the true costs of
a free-access regime. Part II details the benefits of free electronic access
to federal court records.

Part III argues that, in the tradition of Richmond Newspapers, _free access to
electronic court records is a constitutionally necessary element of the
structure of our modern Judiciary._ "

