Re: Hyperlaw on open access to district court filings

[Stephen Schultze <xxxxxxxxxx@cyber.law.harvard.edu>]

He does, however, seem to be making a good argument with respect to  
the fact that inconsistent ad-hoc systems by the individual courts to  
publish their opinions are far inferior to a fairly simple  
modification to CM/ECF/PACER that simply provided free public  
access.  Notably, the argument here is only for free public access to  
the *opinions* and not the full set of case documents.  He is right  
that although in theory one should be able to access recent opinions  
for free via PACER, many of the documents are not flagged as such and  
thus incur charges.

--
Stephen Schultze
Fellow, Berkman Center for Internet and Society
xxxxxxx@cyber.law.harvard.edu




On Sep 12, 2008, at 5:11 PM, Carl Malamud wrote:

> I stay out of their way.  Sugarman has a big problem feeling he has  
> not received his proper due or proper financial rewards, and for  
> some reason he seems to blame me for part of that.  (For example,  
> Markoff said his first attempt at cracking case law "failed" and  
> Alan seemed to think I was responsible for that assessment.)
>
> Their argument is an interesting one.  It is like using FOIA to get  
> a big product.  I don't think it is effective ... draining pacer  
> and getting an installed base gives you standing.  Just whining  
> about what they should be doing makes you a supplicant.  I'd much  
> rather have eyeballs and a big archive and then wait for the right  
> moment to engage their bureaucracy.
>
> I don't the FOIA/public right approach is going to work with the  
> Judicial Conference.  It doesn't address the existing mentality,  
> which is that PACER costs money and therefore they need to charge.   
> It is like using the Rules Committee of the Judicial Conference to  
> address the issue.  It just doesn't take into account the real  
> institutional structure, which is a subcommittee of judges on the  
> IT subcommittee who have a whole lot invested in this big arcane  
> system they built.
>
> But, some low-level harassment like this is ok.  I just won't go  
> anywhere near anything Alan is doing because he is so volatile.
>
> Carl
>
> On Sep 12, 2008, at 1:43 PM, Stephen Schultze wrote:
>
> > I am not a fan of Hyperlaw, given their position in the Jurisline  
> > case, but this back-and-forth is very interesting:
> >
> > http://www.hyperlaw.com/topics/2008/2008-08-19-comment-judcial- 
> > conference-to-consider-archive.html
> >
> > See, in particular, their initial letter (which is linked from the  
> > above).
> >
> > Carl, do you have opinions on the arguments presented here?
> >
> > --
> > Stephen Schultze
> > Fellow, Berkman Center for Internet and Society
> > xxxxxxx@cyber.law.harvard.edu