Posted on 08/15/2017 11:31:50 AM PDT by pharmacopeia
US court records are not copyrighted, but the US court system operates a paywall called "PACER" that is supposed to recoup the costs of serving text files on the internet; charging $0.10/page for access to the public domain, and illegally profiting to the tune of $80,000,000/year.
The response to PACER is RECAP, a browser plugin that captures all the pages anyone pays for in PACER and puts them in a free repository mirrored on the Internet Archvie that anyone can access for free. Among other things, RECAP revealed that the courts were failing in their duty to remove sensitive personal information (like Social Security Numbers or the home addresses of stalking survivors) from their records. Aaron Swartz was key in revealing the scandal of PACER, and it cost him the ire of the federal prosecutors who later hounded him to his suicide, so further editions of RECAP were dedicated to his memory.
Now the Free Law project has made the most significant advance in RECAP to date: liberating "approximately 3.4 million orders and opinions from approximately 1.5 million federal district and bankruptcy court cases dating back to 1960," and doing text-extraction on older files that were served as bitmaps, making them fully searchable.
At Free Law Project, we have gathered millions of court documents over the years, but it’s with distinct pride that we announce that we have now completed our biggest crawl ever. After nearly a year of work, and with support from the U.S. Department of Labor and Georgia State University, we have collected every free written order and opinion that is available in PACER. To accomplish this we used PACER’s “Written Opinion Report,” which provides many opinions for free.
Many times states and counties give authority to publish these laws to a single print house who claims copyright. These prevents public access to these laws without paying a huge fee to buy a copy for yourself or hire a lawyer who knows them.
Laws and codes should be free and online.
Ugh. So many typos. I wish there were a way to preview posts like you can for comments.
Wow, thanks! This is useful information.
“Laws and codes should be free and online. “
Which laws and codes are not free and online?
Put it in a word processor first.
Edit.
Then cut and paste.
Sounds like the laws that come from The Mouths of the Judges as case law.
You’re right. I should use notes on my iPad and will in the future.
It’s more effort, but most here appreciate it, at least passively.
I can handle most lack of editing....
As evidenced by my input....
Many times authority to publish state, county, and civil codes and laws is given to a single publisher that claims copyright. People have been sued for copyright infringement for posting complete sets of laws online.
Again ....
Which laws and codes are not free and online?
Shame on GuideStar.org
It depends on your jurisdiction. My city codes are online but not my county for example. If you live in California you just got online access to state laws in the past 18months due to work and lawsuits from people like this. Etc.
This is really cool. I’ll bet westlaw is pissed.
“If you live in California you just got online access to state laws in the past 18months due to work and lawsuits from people like this. Etc.”
???????????????????????
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes.xhtml
“My city codes are online but not my county for example”
I won’t bother going through all 58 ...
Here’s a link about Carl Malamud challenging Georgia who claims to own the copyright on state laws. Laws shouldn’t be copyrighted.
He also challenged California successfully about 18 months ago but it was a long trial with expensive legal bills. He’s been fighting California’s claim of owning a copyright on state laws since he published their building codes back in 2008.
bfl
Carl is full of b.s.
“Here’s a link about Carl Malamud challenging Georgia who claims to own the copyright on state laws. Laws shouldn’t be copyrighted.”
Terms & Conditions
Your use of this service is subject to Terms and Conditions. These Terms and Conditions do not apply to the Statutory Text and Numbering contained in the Content of the site.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.