Maligned for years for its access fees and clunky system, the PACER system may be in for a bit of a shake-up, courtesy of a new third-party extension for the popular Firefox web browser:
A team led by CITP director Ed Felten has devised a novel means of boosting the availability of PACER documents outside of the paywall. They have created a new Firefox extension called RECAP that seamlessly replicates PACER content and uploads it to a mirror hosted by the Internet Archive. When RECAP users browse the PACER site, the content that they pay to view will be uploaded to the mirror by the Firefox extension. Users will get free access to the documents that are already hosted by the mirror.
[via Firefox extension liberates US court docs from paywall - Ars Technica.]
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It is about time. I use pacer frequently for different court documents. It will be nice to have free access. I hope that the system is also more user friendly.