[anigbrowl]

Carl Malamud is the person behind resource.org. aaronsw downloaded several million documents breaking PACER's TOS, but no action was taken. The archive and 'firehose' feeds on resource.org are mainly thanks to a long-running lobbying campaign by Malamud and others. The PACER system is semi-free to access but part of why it has overhead costs is that it's integrated with ECF, which attorneys use to file documents in Federal court. The cost structure is a legacy of its heritage as a document retrieval system used in brick & mortar court offices where the per-page cost was tied to the paper and printing overhead. Copyright has never been an issue in regards to PACER.