RECAP Plugin, Alternative to PACER allowing FREE government transparency

Up till now, if you wanted access to Federal Court Documents, you had to go through PACER and pay $26.00 + .50/page fee for each document you wanted.

Now, there is a free alternative, but it isn't brought to you by the Federal Government, but offered by a private foundation Public.resource.org started by Prinecton's Center for IT Policy.

They have developed a free Firefox Extension called RECAP the law which allows users to automatically upload the documents they previously download from PACER into a public archive hosted by the Internet Archive. It also saves users money by automatically notifying them if a document they're searching for is available for free from the public archive.

Of course, they do not have every Federal Court Document that PACER has, but over time, they will have built a comprehensive, free repository of Federal Court records that's available to everyone. They already have over 1 million Federal Court records in their database available for free.

This isn't just a homegrown plan either. They already have the support of JUSTIA and the Internet Archive and are incorporating the Federal Court Documents already archived by the public.resource.org.

"Where the people are sovereign, government must always be accountable to citizens - and one important way to insure that remains so is by making government records available to the public. RECAP promises to make court records accessible to the public, helping to further guarantee the sovereignty of the people over our trusted servants in the government." -- Christopher Farrell, Director of Investigations & Research, Judicial Watch

Download RECAP today!

[edit on 14-8-2009 by fraterormus]