We just deleted thousands of court records from our servers because the PACER fee schedule is an unethical racket. A few words in a weekend thread....
We scraped these records for a researcher using a fee waiver they got. According to the fee schedule, any content that you get while using such a waiver cannot be shared. This is the extremely absurd official policy: 
So what happens is first we download the content, then instead of sharing it with the public, we delete it.
Once, in a fit of honesty, a high-level member of the AO explained that the reason for this was because otherwise it would undermine the fee schedule.🤯
Once, in a fit of honesty, a high-level member of the AO explained that the reason for this was because otherwise it would undermine the fee schedule.🤯
In other words, if researchers could share their raw data, the AO wouldn't make as much money off court data.
This doesn't even make sense given how few records researchers are usually allowed access to. Fee waivers also must be limited in time and scope:
So we arrive at today's absurdity. PACER was created to give the public access to court records. But not *too* much access of course. If there's too much access that'd be bad for revenue, so even if you download a bunch of content for research purposes, you can't share that.
Obviously, this contravenes the goal of PACER. It also makes reproducing research largely impossible. Anyway, sayonara court records. Into the trash you go. This is so dumb and can't go on. Congress needs to step in.
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