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We think of laws as being the texts of bills that pass out of Congress and get signed by the president. But the law is really defined by the judicial interpretation of those bills - the transcripts and outcomes of court cases.
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These are in the public domain (like all US government works) but they cost $0.10/page to access, through a Clinton-era system called PACER that is literally just a drive full of PDFs that isn't even searchable.
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The system is supposed to run on a break-even basis, but it pulls in more than $150m/year (again, for a drive full of PDFs). PACER remains the world's largest paywall, though activists have worked hard to chip away at it.
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For example, @recapthelaw is a plugin for PACER users; when you pay for a page, RECAP sends a copy of it to the @internetarchive for open access. Other RECAP users who request that page from PACER are automatically redirected to the free RECAP copy.
https://blog.law.cornell.edu/voxpop/2011/02/03/pacer-recap-and-the-movement-to-free-american-case-law/
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https://blog.law.cornell.edu/voxpop/2011/02/03/pacer-recap-and-the-movement-to-free-american-case-law/
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RECAP has turned up all kinds of dirty secrets about the "the secretive, hierarchical judicial branch."
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052970203550604574361032197709414
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https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052970203550604574361032197709414
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When @aaronsw and friends liberated a huge tranche of PACER docs, they discovered that court clerks were not redacting victims' personal info - SSNs, the names and home addresses of sexual assault survivors (including children), etc.
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They blew the whistle on the courts and in retaliation, the FBI investigated Aaron for "stealing" these public domain court records.
https://sunlightfoundation.com/2013/02/01/open-public-access-to-court-records-for-aaron-freepacer/
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https://sunlightfoundation.com/2013/02/01/open-public-access-to-court-records-for-aaron-freepacer/
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Aaron beat the rap, but the same prosecutors and Feebs that he thwarted came after him for downloading scientific articles from MIT's network and hounded him to his suicide in 2013.
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RECAP's comrades-in-arms are the @freelawproject, who have liberated massive tranches of US law from PACER's paywall:
https://free.law/2017/08/15/we-have-every-free-pacer-opinion-on-courtlistenercom/
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https://free.law/2017/08/15/we-have-every-free-pacer-opinion-on-courtlistenercom/
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In 2016, a district court ruled that PACER had to operate on a break-even basis - not extract additional revenues to fund unrelated courtroom expenses. The US Government appealed, and, last week, they lost.
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/white-collar-and-criminal-law/federal-circuit-affirms-limits-on-how-government-uses-pacer-fees
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https://news.bloomberglaw.com/white-collar-and-criminal-law/federal-circuit-affirms-limits-on-how-government-uses-pacer-fees
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The ruling should end this, but it won't. The as @FixTheCourt's @GabrielRoth told Bloomberg, the courts are likely to continue arguing that a networked drive full of PDFs costs $100m/year to operate, and keep charging Americans to find out what the law says.
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But on the plus side, the appeals court ordered the DoJ to reimburse people who paid too much to read the law.
The latest budget request from the judiciary seeks $142m for PACER (again, this is a networked hard-drive full of PDFs).
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The latest budget request from the judiciary seeks $142m for PACER (again, this is a networked hard-drive full of PDFs).
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