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by lukeschlather 4 days ago
We know where all the money in this system is: it's in LexisNexis and Westlaw. Each of them has revenue over $3B, individually. Presumably they have some lesser-known competitors. PACER fees are $150M. What percentage of PACER fees are paid by LexisNexis and Westlaw anyway in the course of their data ingestion? I'm not sure it really matters, we could simply restructure with a new tax on value-add services like LexisNexis that pulls in $200M, make PACER free, and everyone would be happier, probably including the value-add legal service providers.
1 comments
tptacek 4 days ago
Wait why are we taxing LexisNexis? Making PACER free makes sense (though, again: doing that is regressive); it's a government-run service that is the system of record for court filings.
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lukeschlather 3 days ago
You asserted that we need the money PACER fees bring in - taxing businesses like LexisNexis seems like a way to get the same kind of money that wouldn't be regressive, if we really need to replace that revenue, and it comes from more or less the same place, without being paid by people who can't afford it.
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tptacek 3 days ago
The federal government can apply fee structures to services it offers. It cannot in fact just randomly point at things private organizations do and tax them.
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lukeschlather 3 days ago
Really? Here are 3 examples, I'm not sure what you mean, Congress has extremely broad taxing authority. If what I suggest is unconstitutional (I'm curious to hear your justification for that) they could probably do it by putting terms of use on the PACER data, have a paid tier specifically for orgs that resell the data.

* Sports gambling excise tax: https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employe...

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_telephone_excise_tax

* Indoor tanning services: https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employe...

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tptacek 3 days ago
Fair enough, I was thinking about what the government could do without major congressional action. But still, not going to happen. For many reasons, but one of them is constitutional.

WestLaw is expressive. It's tricky to do targeted taxes on expressive organizations. Pesky First Amendment.

The big reason nothing like this is going to happen is that there are like 40 nerds in the country that care about it, and then a huge majority of the population that is reasonably well served by the current compromise.

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