Re: pacer gross revenue and cost of materials

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

Aaron is right, that's where the numbers came from (mostly).  I've  
found two ways of calculating total annual costs:
1) Adding together ALL costs for "Court Administration and Case  
Management Systems" and "Electronic Public Access" from that report.   
This is a generous estimate, given that there are probably Court  
Administration and Case Management Systems costs that are not PACER- 
related.  Nevertheless, by this measure the costs are only about  
44.30% of revenues (as stated in that report).
2) Using the number provided for "The operational cost of the PSC,"  
which they cite as 4.52% of revenue in 2007: http://www.uscourts.gov/library/annualreports/2007/AR2007_page24.cfm
This is probably a very low estimate, given that the costs of software  
development, hosting, capital costs, and costs from the CM/ECF side of  
things are probably not included.

So, I feel fairly safe in saying the costs are between 4.52 and 44.30  
percent of revenue... meaning that they are making between a 127% and  
2112% "profit".

On Jan 12, 2009, at 1:28 AM, Carl Malamud wrote:
> found it.  thanks!
>
> On Jan 11, 2009, at 10:24 PM, Aaron Swartz wrote:
>
> > It was in that 2007 report you posted; they breakdown both to groups
> > including electronic access.

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