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Bigger question: why is public documentation and legal filings paywalled at all? Wasn't there an old legal precept that that law needs to be public? (Even Drac

Bigger question: why is public documentation and legal filings paywalled at all? Wasn't there an old legal precept that that law needs to be public? (Even Draco saw that as a requirement.) And judicial opinions are part of the law in our system with precedent.

geggam 8y ago
They used to use the cost of creating copies as a threshold to prevent folks from getting things. We just need a lawyer to take the time to point out that cost is negligible and the hosting costs would be nothing if they would do something like torrent the legal records :)
elliekelly 8y ago
> Wasn't there an old legal precept that that law needs to be public? The Federal Courts argue that PACER is just "one avenue" of making the information public and that people can access the information for free by going to any Federal Courthouse. I might buy that argument in 1999, but not in 2019.
anaphor 8y ago
I think the word you're looking for is "promulgation"
Nasrudith 8y ago
Because of a misguided doctrine/dogma that 'systems should pay for themselves directly and never levy any taxes'. While conceptually it might fit with getting revenue to scale with operating costs it has major issues including moral hazard that make it far more expensive. In effect it ends up being a parasite on the system akin to corruption or literal highway robbery and it would have been far more sensible to just leave it free and do taxation and budgeting centrally. It is akin to why bandits were treated with such harshness historically compared to other thieves of almost always being a capital crime. They did damage to the flow of goods and effectively 'broke the roads' because people feared to travel. That was a bad thing for everyone including the people in charge of force of arms so they dealt with the problem using the tool they knew best - violence.

geggam 8y ago

They used to use the cost of creating copies as a threshold to prevent folks from getting things. We just need a lawyer to take the time to point out that cost is negligible and the hosting costs would be nothing if they would do something like torrent the legal records :)

elliekelly 8y ago

> Wasn't there an old legal precept that that law needs to be public? The Federal Courts argue that PACER is just "one avenue" of making the information public and that people can access the information for free by going to any Federal Courthouse. I might buy that argument in 1999, but not in 2019.

anaphor 8y ago

I think the word you're looking for is "promulgation"

Nasrudith 8y ago

Because of a misguided doctrine/dogma that 'systems should pay for themselves directly and never levy any taxes'. While conceptually it might fit with getting revenue to scale with operating costs it has major issues including moral hazard that make it far more expensive. In effect it ends up being a parasite on the system akin to corruption or literal highway robbery and it would have been far more sensible to just leave it free and do taxation and budgeting centrally. It is akin to why bandits were treated with such harshness historically compared to other thieves of almost always being a capital crime. They did damage to the flow of goods and effectively 'broke the roads' because people feared to travel. That was a bad thing for everyone including the people in charge of force of arms so they dealt with the problem using the tool they knew best - violence.