Been so excited to see this enter the real world... This is such a good idea (though, YES, of course PACER should be totally free, but absent that... ) - ThreadSky

mmasnick.bsky.social • 8 hours ago

Been so excited to see this enter the real world... This is such a good idea (though, YES, of course PACER should be totally free, but absent that... )

Reposted from Free Law Project ⚖

Our new "PACER Pray and Pay Project" is launched! This project lets you "Pray" for PACER documents you want, and has a leader board where other people can "Pay" for the most-wanted items.

When your prayer is granted, we let you know! Details below and here: www.courtlistener.com/help/pray-an...

Comments

sashotodorov.bsky.social•7 hours ago

TBF there's no court filing system that's free. Most states run on a free to access - pay to use model where you have to pay money for every filing, often a decent chunk of change ($26.00 per motion in D.C.) PACER's system is more equitable to parties by being free after filing.

sashotodorov.bsky.social•7 hours ago

More generally, PACER is also just not built to handle the colossal data scraping that would happen if it was free. The system is already creaky as it is, and rendering it completely free would basically DDOS the judicial system in the name of researchers.

sashotodorov.bsky.social•7 hours ago

In general I think people forget that PACER is there so that you don't have to have a runner take physical filings to a courthouse. The public visibility is important, but it's not the primary purpose and it shouldn't be the aspect it's optimized for.

jocejocejoe.bsky.social•5 hours ago

Ah yes. The last, great unsolved problem in computing: Serving pdfs on the web.

sashotodorov.bsky.social•4 hours ago

This is hilariously willfully obtuse. The problem is not serving documents, though, shockingly, maintaining critical infrastructure that probably contains over a billion documents at this point and which is used on a daily basis by literally every federal practitioner is a bit of a challenge.

sashotodorov.bsky.social•4 hours ago

The problem is that making PACER be completely free would pretty much immediately result in a large numbers of parties engaging in intensive datascraping across the whole system. The system is not designed to be subject to that kind of pressure.

mmasnick.bsky.social•6 hours ago

Counterpoint: that's all nonsense. Yes, PACER is old, though some of the backend (not the front) was modernized a few years ago. And if they can't handle serving the public, then upgrade the fucking system. It's a public service for public documents. I don't need excuses.

sashotodorov.bsky.social•4 hours ago

It is a public service for *filing* documents. It is there so that the judicial system can function and lawyers can file things. The fact that the outside public can watch what's happening in a case is good, but the primary "customer" isn't genpop, it's the attorneys and parties who are litigating.

mmasnick.bsky.social•3 hours ago

PACER itself says you're wrong. The PA in PACER literally stands for "public access."

I do not understand why you are so dug in on this obviously blatantly wrong, blatantly gate-keeping attitude towards public documents.

It's weird, dude.

jazzhandmedowns.bsky.social•6 hours ago

"Public visibility isn't the primary purpose and it shouldn't be the aspect it's optimized for." Says the fuck who? You?

How much optimization do you think a system needs to give people access to pdfs?

sashotodorov.bsky.social•4 hours ago

...You do get that PACER is built for the purpose of making the lives easier for judges, attorneys, and parties, right? The alternative is the old system where you had to physically personally deliver and pick up papers from a courthouse.

jazzhandmedowns.bsky.social•4 hours ago

"The judiciary generates a large volume of data which is of considerable interest and value to the bar and litigants, to the media, to scholars and government officials, to commercial enterprises, and to the general public" so "the conference authorized an experimental program of electronic access"

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