https://www.politico.com/magazine/amp/story/2019/03/20/pacer-court-records-225821
But I'm here to tell you that PACER—Public Access to Court Electronic Records—is a judicially approved scam. The very name is misleading: Limiting the public's access by charging hefty fees, it has been a scam since it was launched and, barring significant structural changes, will be a scam forever.
Somewhat old but still relevant today.
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
(1)
(1)
(Score: 4, Informative) by DannyB on Friday September 13 2019, @11:45PM (9 children)
As I think I (mis)understand it, if you have the RECAP browser extension, when you visit a PACER item, it gets automagically copied to RECAP. Legal since court documents are public domain.
Satin worshipers are obsessed with high thread counts because they have so many daemons.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 14 2019, @01:06AM
Yes, and I thought there was also a charity that was crawling PACER and submitting documents to RECAP.
(Score: 4, Informative) by black6host on Saturday September 14 2019, @01:32AM
And if you don't have PACER you can search try searching here. https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/ [courtlistener.com] for PACER documents. No extension needed.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 14 2019, @02:20AM (5 children)
If the document is available through RECAP, you can get it for free. If it is not, then you have to pay 10 cents per page, to a max of $3 for accessing pre-assembled documents. However, there is no cap on searches, transcripts, and dynamic lists. So, lets say you want to get the 50 page complaint in the lawsuit of John Smith vs. John Miller. You type the names into the respective fields, but only put the year in as less than 5 ago. The result page is 6 pages, that is 60 cents. You find the case you want and click on it. The docket has 3 pages worth of documents on it, that is another 30 cents. Then you click on the document you want. If available, RECAP will redirect you to the free version; if not, then you pay the $3 maximum fee. Altogether, that one document cost you $3.90 to access.
Always check one of the RECAP indexes first and be super-diligent. Nothing is more frustrating than coming up empty on a RECAP search, then paying to search on PACER, only to find out that you are redirected to a document you must have somehow missed in the RECAP search.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 14 2019, @07:34AM
So, not only is exaeta not a lawyer, he really sucks at open-source legal research? No wonder he loses all his appeals. What a looser!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 14 2019, @09:31AM (3 children)
10c per page is excessive for a PDF dump.why isn't it free?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 15 2019, @05:06AM
Because it is a monopoly. They get to set whatever prices they want. There are lawsuits trying to get various fees struck down as violating various Federal Laws and the Constitution, and they have actually been fairly successful in the lower courts. However, you are basically SoL until the appeals are exhausted because none of the courts have granted injunctions beyond allowing indigents, charities, researchers, and a select few to get fees waived.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Monday September 16 2019, @12:49AM (1 child)
That's the only reason to charge, and the only reason I find reasonable. You allude to it being still on paper or microfilm, and a clerk needing to get it into PDF form. I can then see the public paying for the conversion over time in a on-demand fashion.
If the court's systems are already paper free, or everything is completely scanned as a matter of law, then the public has already paid to get this into a database accessible form via a website. The website they could charge us for again, but then all access to documents already online needs to be free.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 16 2019, @02:02AM
Nope, PACER only goes back to roughly 1999-2002, depending on when the particular court in question instituted electronic filing. If you want a paper copy of something earlier, the most common methods, of which there are a few others, are: you can order it from the FCR for $64 and then pay any copy fees you need, get copies sent to you for $0.50 per page plus postage, or have them scan it into electronic form for $31 and then pay the normal access fee. You have to do the math to see what would end up being cheaper for you in a particular case, and in rarer ones, sometimes one of the less common methods ones are better.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 14 2019, @08:41AM
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 14 2019, @01:00AM (1 child)
And what did you expect to get as a result when you let criminals to write the laws, for many centuries?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 14 2019, @05:54AM
Leave Australia out of this, you insensitive clod!
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by aristarchus on Saturday September 14 2019, @07:20AM (2 children)
Filter error: Please take your trolling someplace else.
(Score: 2, Funny) by aristarchus on Saturday September 14 2019, @07:26AM (1 child)
Like, here, oh mighty Soylent hasH? Oh, the irony of trying to not mod down the down-modable exaeta, but to provide a comment to help him recognize the error of his ways, and then getting filtered? What the hell is a filter? Is this not censorship by the SoylentNews? Is the not what I have been going on about? Look! Look here! This is the violence inherent in the System! This is what I am on about!
And, I still think that exaeta is a criminal, one that does not comprehend the rule of law, and whom we should mock mercilessly. I will mod him down, when I get the chance.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 14 2019, @03:09PM
Been getting more of those lately thanks to micros~1 boy and his fetish. Is also more difficult to post from tor exit nodes, but it imho is all good. Parts of comments can be reworded to get around them. Are these necessary compromises in the face of internet background radiation?
The only beneficial thing to come from this may be reflection on the nature of free speech and how a scoundrel among scoundrels challenges technical solutions. Is this fundamentally different from goings on about twits using failbook and expecting that every youtube video is a high-quality, well-researched documentary?
Would be interested in your analysis.