This is the California Supreme Court's opinions page: http://www.courts.ca.gov/opinions.htm

Lexis takes the slip opinions, edits and indexes them, and hosts them (1850 - Present, which means they went back and digitized old opinions), and lets you access them free of charge with an explicit disclaimer of any copyright.

The court itself separately publishes the unedited slip opinions in both PDF and DOC format as they are rendered. What more do you want? Are you going to pay for the court to duplicate Lexis's effort so you don't have to agree to the terms and conditions?

There is a difference between freely releasing the information and undertaking the expenditure to aggregate and collect the information then making it available for no charge.

Who are these "powerful individuals" and what exactly are they keeping from you? Upgrading the court systems are not as easy as you make them out to be. We're not talking about one system here. We're talking about hundreds of separate systems, the result of the independent administration of hundreds of decentralized state and federal courts. It's a massive undertaking, meanwhile the court system is perpetually underfunded.

NB: As for the Maryland code, Lexis is not the only source. The University of Maryland provides links to several sources: http://lib.guides.umd.edu/content.php?pid=131120&sid=112.... E.g. http://mgaleg.maryland.gov/webmga/frmStatutes.aspx?pid=statp.... They're just PDFs: http://mgaleg.maryland.gov/Pubs/LegisLegal/2012rs-laws-maryl....

1. The California link you provided points to the California link I provided.

2. Yes, I want my tax dollars to pay for the court to be able to host, edit and index its own opinions without an intermediary.

3. "Powerful individuals" are the judges who run the Administrative Office of the Courts, and by extension, PACER. I would be surprised to hear anyone dispute that they are in a position of power.

4. I know roughly what it would take to upgrade PACER. I've spent the past year designing and implementing a similar system. For PACER, the "hundreds of systems" you reference are similar enough that they could and should be consolidated into one. State courts are a separate issue and not the focus of this particular initiative since most states that I know of allow costless access to court documents.

5. Lexis is the only OFFICIAL source of the Code of Maryland. (Note that I said above "for which there is no other official source.")

Yes, but it also points to the unedited slip opinions, which you conveniently left out.

> 2. Yes, I want my tax dollars to pay for the court to be able to host, edit and index its own opinions without an intermediary.

Then lobby for that. Don't indulge in conspiracy theories about how Lexis/West are blocking access to public documents.

> 3. "Powerful individuals" are the judges who run the Administrative Office of the Courts, and by extension, PACER. I would be surprised to hear anyone dispute that they are in a position of power.

Oh yes, the Administrative Office of the Courts, that powerful agency with a massive $50 million budget. :-/ If there is a less powerful agency in the federal government it doesn't come to mind.

> 4. I know roughly what it would take to upgrade PACER. I've spent the past year designing and implementing a similar system. For PACER, the "hundreds of systems" you reference are similar enough that they could and should be consolidated into one.

Do you know how many engineers have said to themselves: "I could totally replace this big complex mission-critical system in X amount of time with Y amount of money?" Where X and Y turned out to be ridiculous overoptimistic underestimates?

> 5. Lexis is the only OFFICIAL source of the Code of Maryland. (Note that I said above "for which there is no other official source.")

What do you mean by "official"? If you mean "authoritative" then the Code is not authoritative. The authoritative source of the law are the session laws.

"While the “Laws of Maryland” (Session Laws) constitute the official laws of the State, the Code is accepted as “evidence” of the law in all State courts and by all public offices and officials. However, in the event of a conflict between the Code and the Session Laws, the Session Laws prevail." (http://mgaleg.maryland.gov/webmga/frmStatutes.aspx?pid=statp...).

I will lobby and I will point out as much as possible that Lexis and West are part of a system, whether coordinated or not, that blocks access to public documents.

The Court's power comes from the Constitution, not its budget.

The Session Laws appear to be available only as PDFs, and I'm more interested in the Code in any event.

Lastly, the whole reason we are having this discussion is because of the death of Aaron Swartz. Aaron believed very strongly in open access to data. If you have a problem with that it's fine, but your arguments come across to me as A) strange, as though you have some connection to the entities you are defending (though you may not), and B) rather tone-deaf and insulting, whether or not you mean them to be. Aaron died for these principles.

And with that I think I've said enough.

Second, people are allowed to disagree with you, even after Aaron's tragic death, even when we can reasonably guess that Aaron would have taken your side in an argument, without being "tone-deaf" and "insulting". From what very little experience I had with Aaron, I feel confident that he would rather have had people debating him than become a card to be played by other people in arguments to shut people up.

Third, the trope of accusing people who disagree with you on HN of somehow being bought and paid for agents of some shadowy force would be offensive if it wasn't so stupid-sounding; so... for lack of any better word: lame. Really, Aaron? Rayiner is somehow connected to Westlaw? The evil forces of Lexis?

Finally, as I understand it, this story links directly to a service for which you collect money. Have I misread that somehow?