Appropriate that this subject makes an appearance on HN so close to the anniversary of Aaron Swartz's suicide under duress and attack from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Making court documents more publicly accessible was one of Aaron's projects (circa 2008). He and project collaborators downloaded more than a million documents from the government's PACER electronic access system using public library terminals and attracted the attention of the FBI.[1] Part of the goal at the time was to uncover privacy violations in filed court documents that were legally a matter of public record but behind a lucrative, government administrated pay wall.[2]
There is something important to be said for the social and moral importance of keeping the public record publicly accessible. The justification for these intermediaries to exist and extract rent from the cataloging of public information grows slimmer and slimmer, but cataloging and indexing everything in a common law (precedent based) system is tremendously expensive. I suspect that developing of an algorithm to usefully search the dense and interweaving web of judicial opinions, case history, written legislation, and jurisdictions in which all those elements apply/overlap/supersede each other is also a massive capital investment.
It all does have to be paid for somehow, and I don't think how to fund is a settled question. Pay walls clearly have pernicious externalities (privacy violations go unnoticed; access to law is practically limited to professionals for whom the costs are a business expense). But I don't trust the state to properly fund or develop such a service through general tax either.
Consider supporting the individuals in this thread who are working to make that sort of open information access in law a reality, and consider also who will seek rent from the finished service who will not.
The law is formed by the government and the judiciary and applies to everyone living in or visiting the State. It's entirely reasonable to require the State to pay for unfettered access to the law.
While access to case law is in fact required unless the case has been sealed by a judge, convenient and free access is not required. The states can charge for paper copies and make those copies only accessible via a USPS mailed form.
That's the underlying problem. Barriers to access can be an effective tool for creating "expert" silos, where only those who have the means and the correct keys may travel.
Most docs are available through Pacer. Pacer pricing is $0.10 per page capped at $3 per document. Buying everything would cost a lot. In addition, new case law is continuously being created. So you couldn't buy everything and be done with it.
You can republish... court docs are in the public domain. RPXCorp tried doing this with patent law. For a time, they made everything free. That practice didn't last and they now pass on their costs to customers.
Making court documents more publicly accessible was one of Aaron's projects (circa 2008). He and project collaborators downloaded more than a million documents from the government's PACER electronic access system using public library terminals and attracted the attention of the FBI.[1] Part of the goal at the time was to uncover privacy violations in filed court documents that were legally a matter of public record but behind a lucrative, government administrated pay wall.[2]
There is something important to be said for the social and moral importance of keeping the public record publicly accessible. The justification for these intermediaries to exist and extract rent from the cataloging of public information grows slimmer and slimmer, but cataloging and indexing everything in a common law (precedent based) system is tremendously expensive. I suspect that developing of an algorithm to usefully search the dense and interweaving web of judicial opinions, case history, written legislation, and jurisdictions in which all those elements apply/overlap/supersede each other is also a massive capital investment.
It all does have to be paid for somehow, and I don't think how to fund is a settled question. Pay walls clearly have pernicious externalities (privacy violations go unnoticed; access to law is practically limited to professionals for whom the costs are a business expense). But I don't trust the state to properly fund or develop such a service through general tax either.
Consider supporting the individuals in this thread who are working to make that sort of open information access in law a reality, and consider also who will seek rent from the finished service who will not.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz#PACER
[2]: https://public.resource.org/crime/