Less than 18% of the total income generated by PACER fees relate directly to the cost of running the service – that’s according to a new working paper by Steve Schultze, Associate Director of the Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy.
Where does the rest go? Read the paper to find out. From the abstract:
There has been considerable confusion about motivation and justification for the courts charge for access to PACER, the web-based system for “Public Access to Court Electronic Records.” Representatives from the Administrative Office of the Courts describe the policy as mandated by Congress and limited to reimbursing the expenses of operating the system. This paper identifies the sources of these claims and places them in the context of the increasing push to make government data freely accessible.
Source: Law Librarian Blog