3 ms·

It just boggles the mind that in a society ruled by laws, access to said laws would be locked up behind a paywall.

cyral 5y ago
It reminds me of how ISO standards, from date specifications, to the hz for the musical note "A", to railway engineering, have to be purchased from ISO just for the PDF.
- ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
  > It reminds me of how ISO standards, from date specifications, to the hz for the musical note "A", to railway engineering, have to be purchased from ISO just for the PDF. At eye-watering rates. https://webstore.ansi.org/Search/Find?st=iso&v=5&cp=1&f1=Standard&f2=2 https://webstore.ansi.org/Search/Find?st=iso&v=5&cp=1&f1=Sta...
mumblemumble 5y ago
It's not that unusual. PACER's pricing was ridiculous, but, in principle and from a historical perspective, having to pay for access to information has been the norm. And for understandable reasons. Only a generation ago, access to court records naturally cost money, because neither paper nor file clerks' time is free. It's only within the past couple decades that technology has reduced the costs associated with providing public access to court records down to a level where it's easy to contemplate making the service free to all users as part of the public budget.
- robflynn 5y ago
  I was shocked the first time I needed to download something from PACER and saw that the pricing was per-page (of a PDF!)
  - mumblemumble 5y ago
    Per-page is pretty common in the legal industry generally. It's a holdover from the paper days, when the provider's costs were more a function of page count than document count.
bell-cot 5y ago
The old "He who has the gold makes the rules" trick works even better when those without the gold only get to learn the rules when & where convenient to those with. Or they have to give up whatever silver they've managed to scrape together in order to learn some of the current rules.
tiahura 5y ago
They are not. Court of appeals decisions (a decision that's of precedential value) and any district court decision of importance are public already. This makes public district court opinions nobody cares about (ok I suppose), as well as the pleadings and motions filed by the parties in the case. Those documents contain a treasure trove of private information that wasn't disclosed with the expectation of broad public dissemination.

It reminds me of how ISO standards, from date specifications, to the hz for the musical note "A", to railway engineering, have to be purchased from ISO just for the PDF.

ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
> It reminds me of how ISO standards, from date specifications, to the hz for the musical note "A", to railway engineering, have to be purchased from ISO just for the PDF. At eye-watering rates. https://webstore.ansi.org/Search/Find?st=iso&v=5&cp=1&f1=Standard&f2=2 https://webstore.ansi.org/Search/Find?st=iso&v=5&cp=1&f1=Sta...

mumblemumble 5y ago

It's not that unusual. PACER's pricing was ridiculous, but, in principle and from a historical perspective, having to pay for access to information has been the norm. And for understandable reasons. Only a generation ago, access to court records naturally cost money, because neither paper nor file clerks' time is free. It's only within the past couple decades that technology has reduced the costs associated with providing public access to court records down to a level where it's easy to contemplate making the service free to all users as part of the public budget.

robflynn 5y ago
I was shocked the first time I needed to download something from PACER and saw that the pricing was per-page (of a PDF!)
- mumblemumble 5y ago
  Per-page is pretty common in the legal industry generally. It's a holdover from the paper days, when the provider's costs were more a function of page count than document count.

bell-cot 5y ago

The old "He who has the gold makes the rules" trick works even better when those without the gold only get to learn the rules when & where convenient to those with. Or they have to give up whatever silver they've managed to scrape together in order to learn some of the current rules.

tiahura 5y ago

They are not. Court of appeals decisions (a decision that's of precedential value) and any district court decision of importance are public already. This makes public district court opinions nobody cares about (ok I suppose), as well as the pleadings and motions filed by the parties in the case. Those documents contain a treasure trove of private information that wasn't disclosed with the expectation of broad public dissemination.