[rayiner]

RECAP is a hack and depends on someone to have accessed the document in the first instance. It's not true public access.

The issue is that PACER is designed primarily for attorneys. That's why the usage fees are so high--it's a basically a tax on attorneys that goes to funding the operations of the courts. (Pro se individuals are entitled to receive filings in their cases for free.)

The open access folks have a legitimate point that PACER makes it hard for the public to access those same documents. But the solution to that isn't to abuse PACER. If we think everyone should have free access to these documents,[1] the solution is to build a website where these things are published. And, since that would undercut the value of PACER, arrangements would have to be made to replace that revenue with general appropriations.

[1] Note the reason we would want to do this is that these are public records, not because they constitute "the law." Court opinions with precedential value are already published on courts' websites in PDF format. What PACER contains is everything else.