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Chuck, I'm not sure who you talked to in 2006 at Google, you should know we basically done done it already :) It was being done then, in fact. It made it well p

Chuck, I'm not sure who you talked to in 2006 at Google, you should know we basically done done it already :) It was being done then, in fact. It made it well past the discussion page, and was already being implemented. We spent a lot of time building up a case law, pushing to open Pacer (meeting with the federal judiciary and offering to just pay the revenue they make), etc. Scholar has pretty up to date legal data since then, from OCR'ing federal reporters to parsing it, to what have you. In fact, ask Carl. We worked really closely with him and have helped fund him for years, both directly, and through public.resource.org (https://yeswescan.org/index.court.html https://yeswescan.org/index.court.html - 9F is Anurag, who started/ran Google Scholar, 22F is the group I ran) A lot of states have exclusive contracts with westlaw or nexis or what have you, so it's non-trivial. The target was also to try to have data for the kind of situation you mention, not to try to replace the dedicate legal resources that exist. Anyway, again, not sure why you think Google didn't do it.

AnthonyMouse 10y ago
> A lot of states have exclusive contracts with westlaw or nexis or what have you, so it's non-trivial. Have you considered bidding for the contracts when they come up?
- DannyBee 10y ago
  You say this as if they aren't like 10+ year contracts :) Also, they often come with crazy requirements and local IT support (designed this way in order to ensure only lexis/westlaw can fulfill them).
  - AnthonyMouse 10y ago
    That sounds suspiciously like Corruption.
    - foxyv 10y ago
      Sorta, but not really. Usually what happens is that a company works with a state or local government on custom projects for so long that they create their own niche which is extremely difficult for a newcomer to fill. This is mostly just an emergent property of bureaucracy. Eventually these niches are choked off and die, however it takes decades.
nkw 10y ago
> pushing to open Pacer (meeting with the federal judiciary and offering to just pay the revenue they make) Wait what? You offered to pay the ~$145M/year they bring in for access fees in return for an open access PACER system? Was this offer just made to the PACER people or was it brought to the attention of the Judicial Conference?
- DannyBee 10y ago
  We talked to the judicial conference of course. Honestly, it this was a long time ago at this point. We may have only offered to pay what it costs them to run it instead of revenue. It was definitely somewhere between those two. (I realize there is a huge difference in those two numbers, but we were also idealistic and thought they might actually care about public access at the time. Look how dumb we were)
  - nkw 10y ago
    Interesting. I have never been able to put my finger on if the resistance to opening pacer comes from the judiciary itself (judges fearing public scrutiny of the entire corpus of court filings) vs the Admin Office / IT wanting to maintain what is essentially a court-tech slush fund. Probably the reality is a little bit of both. I think the only way it gets fixed is with congressional action, so not holding my breath.
    - DannyBee 10y ago
      From what i can tell, it's the latter, not the former. They are so underfunded otherwise they can't afford to give it up
username3 10y ago
Does Google Scholar have transcripts from trials before appealing?

AnthonyMouse 10y ago

> A lot of states have exclusive contracts with westlaw or nexis or what have you, so it's non-trivial. Have you considered bidding for the contracts when they come up?

DannyBee 10y ago
You say this as if they aren't like 10+ year contracts :) Also, they often come with crazy requirements and local IT support (designed this way in order to ensure only lexis/westlaw can fulfill them).
- AnthonyMouse 10y ago
  That sounds suspiciously like Corruption.
  - foxyv 10y ago
    Sorta, but not really. Usually what happens is that a company works with a state or local government on custom projects for so long that they create their own niche which is extremely difficult for a newcomer to fill. This is mostly just an emergent property of bureaucracy. Eventually these niches are choked off and die, however it takes decades.

nkw 10y ago

> pushing to open Pacer (meeting with the federal judiciary and offering to just pay the revenue they make) Wait what? You offered to pay the ~$145M/year they bring in for access fees in return for an open access PACER system? Was this offer just made to the PACER people or was it brought to the attention of the Judicial Conference?

DannyBee 10y ago
We talked to the judicial conference of course. Honestly, it this was a long time ago at this point. We may have only offered to pay what it costs them to run it instead of revenue. It was definitely somewhere between those two. (I realize there is a huge difference in those two numbers, but we were also idealistic and thought they might actually care about public access at the time. Look how dumb we were)
- nkw 10y ago
  Interesting. I have never been able to put my finger on if the resistance to opening pacer comes from the judiciary itself (judges fearing public scrutiny of the entire corpus of court filings) vs the Admin Office / IT wanting to maintain what is essentially a court-tech slush fund. Probably the reality is a little bit of both. I think the only way it gets fixed is with congressional action, so not holding my breath.
  - DannyBee 10y ago
    From what i can tell, it's the latter, not the former. They are so underfunded otherwise they can't afford to give it up

username3 10y ago

Does Google Scholar have transcripts from trials before appealing?