{"id":3133,"date":"2009-08-16T17:58:08","date_gmt":"2009-08-16T21:58:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.libology.com\/blog\/?p=3133"},"modified":"2009-08-16T17:58:08","modified_gmt":"2009-08-16T21:58:08","slug":"recaping-pacer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.libology.com\/blog\/2009\/08\/16\/recaping-pacer.html","title":{"rendered":"RECAPing PACER"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/pacer.psc.uscourts.gov\/\">PACER<\/a> is the online access portal for &#8220;U.S. Appellate,               District, and Bankruptcy court records and documents nationwide&#8221;.\u00a0 Because the documents it provides are created by the federal judiciary, they are not  copyrightable; because PACER is the only place to obtain these records, it is a critical link to those who need case information.\u00a0 PACER also charges a per-page fee ($0.08 per page up to 30 pages in a specific document) for access.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.recapthelaw.org\/\"><strong>RECAP<\/strong><\/a> (which is PACER spelled backwards) is a new, open source Firefox extension which appears to follow all the rules:\u00a0 you access documents through PACER, paying all assessed fees, and you get your docuements.\u00a0 RECAP, however adds two elements to the mix:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>RECAP automatically uploads any document that is accessed by users of the extension to a public repository hosted by the Internet Archive.<\/li>\n<li>RECAP will alert the user when a document they wish to access is available through the public repository.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>On the surface, it may appear that people are conducting an end-run against the court&#8217;s system for providing documents.\u00a0 However, a broader view strongly suggests that these documents are public, and that the PACER system is actually an exception in the realm of access to public records.<\/p>\n<p>The Executive and Legislative branches of the federal government provide documents free to the user; this is an attempt to make the workings and decisions of the judiciary as public as the other branches.\u00a0 RECAP is a fully legal means to provide information in a way that is the spirit of the law.<\/p>\n<p>Further reading:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/arstechnica.com\/tech-policy\/news\/2009\/04\/case-against-pacer.ars\">The Case Against PACER<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/arstechnica.com\/tech-policy\/news\/2009\/08\/recap-firefox-extension-builds-crowdsourced-pacer-mirror.ars\">Firefox Extension Liberates US Court Docs from Paywall<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.techcrunch.com\/2009\/08\/14\/use-recap-to-bypass-court-document-pacer-paywall\/\">Use RECAP to Bypass Court Document Paywall<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>PACER is the online access portal for &#8220;U.S. Appellate, District, and Bankruptcy court records and documents nationwide&#8221;.\u00a0 Because the documents it provides are created by the federal judiciary, they are not copyrightable; because PACER is the only place to obtain &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.libology.com\/blog\/2009\/08\/16\/recaping-pacer.html\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2918,2925,2935,2951,2952,2954,2982,2966],"tags":[5022,5021,3507,3966,5351,3092,5020,5368,5388,5019,5018,5023,5013],"class_list":["post-3133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archival","category-copyright","category-government","category-online-databases","category-online-services","category-open-access","category-open-source","category-software","tag-appellate-court","tag-bankruptcy-court","tag-federal-government","tag-firefox","tag-government","tag-internet-archive","tag-legal-research","tag-open-access","tag-open-source","tag-pacer","tag-public-records","tag-recap","tag-united-states-copyright-law"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pSU5g-Ox","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.libology.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.libology.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.libology.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.libology.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.libology.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3133"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.libology.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3133\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.libology.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.libology.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.libology.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}