Legal Research

PACER Controversy

By David Badertscher, PLL

The New York Times contains an article by John Schwartz entitled "An Effort to Upgrade a Court Archive System to Free and Easy." It details efforts to make the PACER federal court documents system more accessible and open to the public through an initiative of non-government individuals devoted to promoting transparency of government and information access.  Open government activists have downloaded a significant portion of the PACER archive of documents, and these actions resulted in the federal government suspending the free PACER program at select libraries.  The article is available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/us/13records.html?_r=1&ref=technology

Submitted by Ted Pollack, Sr. Law Librarian, NY County Public Access Law Library

Full post as published by New York Supreme Court Criminal Term Library on February 13, 2009 (boomark / email).