PACER. It’s not just a shitty hatchback anymore!
Actually, it’s the Federal Government’s database of federal court cases, including “information on civil, criminal, and bankruptcy cases”.
Of course, this is public information.
Aaron Swartz, the computer genius under federal investigation when he killed himself, accessed the PACER database during a brief trial period where documents were free. Now, documents cost 10 cents a page to access, which adds up considering cases are trees worth of paper long.
The Federal Government can charge for PACER because, according to the law that established it, “[t]he Judicial Conference may, only to the extent necessary, prescribe reasonable fees”.
But according to some Princeton professors, “the Courts claim PACER expenses of roughly $25 million per year. But in 2010, PACER users paid about $90 million in fees to access the system.”
That sounds way beyond “the extent necessary” and is, according to the law that established PACER, illegal.
Not to mention the website is about as outdated as a Geocities page, and for a few thousand dollars, could be completely overhauled, modernized, and streamlined.
To do that, however, the government would have to give up making a hefty profit off of this old system.
