Re: Hyperlaw on open access to district court filings

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

Cool, I agree.

On Sep 12, 2008, at 6:05 PM, Carl Malamud wrote:
> The argument is great ... Connecticut Law Tribune did a piece about  
> this and I was very effusive ... what Alan proposes is what the  
> courts should do.  But, I'm skeptical of that actually happening.   
> The big problem is that we don't have standing as ordinary  
> citizens.  We can be as right as we want, but if you're not named  
> "Your Honor", you don't have a seat at the table.  And, so far at  
> least, none of them has got a clue.
>
> But, if we proxy pacer and other primary legal materials on the  
> Internet, I think we will have a very effective voice because then  
> we have eyeballs.
>
> I'm glad Alan is doing what he is doing, just as I was glad that  
> Jamie Love did what he did on EDGAR, Patent, and other databases.   
> But, I'd rather go look for a large stack of tapes, DVDs, or other  
> raw data or go harvest some database on the net.  $0.02.
>
> Carl
>
> On Sep 12, 2008, at 2:50 PM, Stephen Schultze wrote:
>
> > 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.