Federal court documents are currently made available to the public through a crufty system called PACER. For eight cents per page, users can download filings and other relevant documents associated with individual cases.
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A team led by CITP director Ed Felten has devised a novel means of boosting the availability of PACER documents outside of the paywall. They have created a new Firefox extension called RECAP that seamlessly replicates PACER content and uploads it to a mirror hosted by the Internet Archive. When RECAP users browse the PACER site, the content that they pay to view will be uploaded to the mirror by the Firefox extension. Users will get free access to the documents that are already hosted by the mirror.
Over time, free PACER content will accumulate at the Internet Archive's mirror, making it unnecessary for additional users to pay PACER for access to those files. The unrestricted availability of the mirrored legal documents will empower legal researchers and members of the public who can't simply pass the access costs along to clients as most lawyers do.
This blog post provides an idea of how much material is available at this time.
The ars Technica article also mentions OpenRegs.com.
A website established in June by Mercatus Center researcher Jerry Brito and programmer Peter Snyder to help people navigate federal regulations.
In late May, 2009, ResourceShelf posted about the "just released" Open Jurist project who's aim it is to compile, organize, and make searchable opinions (for free) At that time the database contained about 647,000 opinions.
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