Senator [Joe] Lieberman has written a letter to the Judicial Conference asking why the PACER (Public Access to Court Electronic Records) online system is still charging a “per page” fee, when the goal of putting these records online in the first place was to make them “freely available to the greatest extent possible.” That was seven years ago.
PACER doesn’t seem to have made any progress since then. Apparently the public (still) agrees–PACER is one of the top vote getters at our Show Us the Data project. In addition, the barrier to accessing court records has inspired citizens to try to free the information in PACER.
PACER was instructed to charge access fees “only to the extent necessary,” ...
Update. See also this story from the National Law Journal.
Posted by
Gavin Baker at 2/28/2009 03:03:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
