The case against PACER: tearing down the courts' paywall-

The courts are coming under increasing pressure to address these flaws, and last year, RSS pioneer Aaron Swartz and open government activist Carl Malamud took matters into their own hands. The courts had launched a pilot program that gave free PACER access to patrons of selected libraries, so Swartz and Malamud went to the libraries with thumb drives and used a Perl script to download as many documents as they could. They got about 20 million documents before the courts abruptly canceled the trial. The documents—about 700 GB in total—are now available from Malamud's website, but there are still terabytes of public documents locked behind PACER's paywall.

Via Reason.


In reply to Perl aids in protecting rights to access government information by Your Mother

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