>So this talk of opening up PACER is really missing the broader access point - the opinion access problem is largely solved via Google Scholar.

Yes and no. Suppose I want to take a stab at automating Westlaw. Now I need to download all of the court opinions ever so that I can put them in my database and use them to train my machine learning algorithm. Can I actually get them for any reasonable price? All of them? And without doing something that will get me charged with unauthorized access to a computer like Aaron? Because if not, fixing that is a legitimate goal. (And if so, do post the link.)

"Google Scholar provides a US Federal case law database which includes US Supreme Court opinions since 1 US 1 (pre - 1776), Federal Appeals opinions since 1 F 2d 1 (1924+), and many Federal District Court opinions from the Federal Supplement. Opinions from all 50 states are included since 1950. Internal page numbers are included as well, and cases are hyperlinked to other cases within each case. Click on the "Cited by" link to see citations of a particlar opinion in other case law." (http://virtualchase.justia.com/wiki/united-states-federal-ca...)

So very close to "everything."[1] Why don't you ask Google to put up a torrent?

[1] Anything that isn't in there is probably on a library shelf somewhere, and you're welcome to do the same thing Lexis/Westlaw did and scan it in yourself.

The distinction here is between you as the public trying to understand the law, and you as a businessperson trying to make money off of the law. The push to open up PACER is based on ideals about the former, not the latter. (And the former is Google Scholar Legal's Raison d'être.)

Certainly it will be great to have free access to the data in bulk, and that day will come. But from a practical perspective, the barrier to entry as a businessperson in this space is not data. There is enough data at https://bulk.resource.org/courts.gov/ to experiment with. And if your experiments work, there are companies that will sell you access to all the data.

I don't know if you can distinguish the two so easily. You can't really expect the government to provide a slick interface or make the data easy to use. It's well outside of the court system's core competency. But if you make the raw data easily accessible then it creates the possibility for entrepreneurs to do something innovative with it, which leads to the public benefit.

Heck, that's pretty much where Lexis and West came from so long ago, but now technology is offering the possibility (at least in theory) to democratize the process so that someone can screw around with the data over a weekend or three and see if they can create something worth following up before they go through the trouble of looking for funding in order to buy data.

I don't know if we're even particularly arguing about anything. Is there really an argument to be made that this data should not be freely available? If "that day will come" then I guess all I'm saying is that sooner is better than later.

There may not be a disagreement: I'm not arguing that this data should be closed. I believe it should be freely available, and should be freely available in bulk form.

My only point was that providing open access to cases so that individuals can learn the law is a solved problem via Google Scholar. Bulk access is not a problem for individuals. I say this as someone who has worked to create better legal research tools for nearly 5 years: the first 2 on a startup that failed, the next 1 at Scholar, and the last 1.5 on a new startup that I believe will finally succeed.

So while the desire to open up PACER - and the attention given to it - is great, I don't think it will have any effect on the future of individual access to law, or to the future of innovation and business in the legal space. I don't think lack of innovation today has anything to do with lack of bulk access today. I think the deficiencies are more a reflection of the fact that innovation in this space is really hard.

Scholar has problems in this area because of exclusive contracts to westlaw/lexis in the state arena, and for other reasons in the federal arena

Basically: The opinion access problem is not "largely solved". If it was, Google wouldn't be one of the folks fighting to get access to opinions, and I wouldn't be funding folks like Carl Malamud to do things like scan federal reporters (https://yeswescan.org/index.court.html, #22).

I'm not certain I understand what problems you are alluding to. Scholar has cases, and for you as an individual finding a case is largely trivial.

If your interest is in getting and providing bulk access to cases, then yes, you have obstacles. But that is only a problem for a select few individuals/companies who care about this as a business or hobby. The end users you may be trying to service by offering access to the cases can already get access to the cases from Google for free.

EDIT: To be clear, I'm not intending to downplay or diminish the efforts of you and others to open up access to those older cases. I think that is great. All I am saying is that for the vast majority of people, the vast majority of the time, there really isn't a problem in finding cases online.

I'm saying scholar has a problem in actually getting the data to give it to you, and that is the problem trying to be solved by getting PACER to open up.

And I'm saying that is not true. Scholar has nearly all of the cases anyone cares about - that's how they can index and serve them. (I say this as a former Google Scholar engineer.) If you are an individual, you can read the cases on Scholar. If you are a business and want to buy the cases in bulk - then you can find someone to sell them to you.

Opening up PACER really doesn't help in practice because the data is ridiculously dirty - crappy scanned PDFs which people then pay to have triple keyed.

Edit: Ugh. It's not worth having this argument in public. Let's just say I strenuously disagree, and I was just as much there as you were.

EDIT: Regardless, this has been an interesting discussion and I'd enjoy taking it out of the context of HN if you are interested: itai |at| judicata |.com|