PACER: Document Liberation Plugin RECAP

grarpamp grarpamp at gmail.com
Fri Dec 4 17:14:08 PST 2020


https://free.law/recap/
https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/

If you use PACER, install RECAP. Once installed, every docket or PDF
you purchase on PACER will be added to the RECAP Archive. Anything
somebody else has added to the archive will be available to you for
free — right in PACER itself.

Thanks to our users and our data consulting projects, the RECAP
Archive contains tens of millions of PACER documents, including every
free opinion in PACER. Everything in the archive is fully searchable,
including millions of pages that were originally scanned PDFs.
Everything that is in the RECAP Archive is also regularly uploaded to
the Internet Archive, where it has a lasting home. This amounts to
thousands of liberated documents daily.
Finally, we make the RECAP Archive available via an API or as bulk
data for journalists, researchers, startups, and developers.

There are others working on these issues as well. See, for instance:
    Carl Malamud has published millions of documents and privacy
audits on public.resource.org
    Erika Wayne, Law Librarian at Stanford, is mobilizing people
through her Improve Pacer petition
    Senator Lieberman has asked some pointed questions about judicial
compliance with the E-Government Act of 2002
    Alan Sugarman has detailed the many ways in which PACER “free”
opinions are inadequate
    Justia posts many dockets, along with PACER documents
    Many academics have created smaller litigation clearinghouses with
PACER documents related to civil rights, citizen media, intellectual
property, and more.
    The American Association of Law Libraries advocates for no-fee
access to PACER
    RECAP co-author Timothy B. Lee wrote an article about PACER and
the prospects of reform for Ars Technica in April.


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