Court Records Should Be Free, Not Paywalled by PACER

What the Bill Is

The Open Courts Act of 2026 is the legislative vehicle EFF, Fix the Court, the Free Law Project, and a coalition of civil society, open government, and media organizations sent to Congress on June 15, 2026.^[1]

The bill does three things:

Replaces PACER and CM/ECF with a modern unified platform. PACER (Public Access to Court Electronic Records) is the 1980s-era system the federal courts built to give the public electronic access to federal court filings. CM/ECF (Case Management/Electronic Case Files) is the back-end system the courts use to file, serve, and manage those documents. The two systems were never designed to talk to each other cleanly, and the courts have spent two decades patching them. The Open Courts Act would replace both with a single modern platform designed for public access from the start, with a unified search interface, structured metadata, and bulk-export capabilities that PACER actively blocks.^[2]

Eliminates the per-page fee structure. PACER charges $0.10 per page for any document accessed through the public system, capped at $3 per document, with a quarterly $15 waiver threshold that wipes out fees for users with low quarterly usage. For most individual researchers, journalists, and members of the public, fees are functionally a barrier rather than a revenue source. The bill would eliminate fees entirely and replace the fee revenue with appropriated funding.^[3]

Equalizes access for re-distributors. The structural complaint about PACER that most members of the public never see: PACER charges commercial re-distributors bulk-access fees that are radically higher than individual access fees. The Free Law Project's RECAP, the most successful effort to build a free archive of federal court records, works around PACER's bulk-fee structure by letting users upload documents they purchased individually, which then become free for everyone. The Open Courts Act would require the new platform to treat bulk and individual access on the same terms, eliminating the structural advantage PACER gives to incumbent commercial re-distributors who can absorb the bulk fees.^[4]

The coalition's framing in the June 15 letter is broader than "make PACER free." It cites two structural arguments. First, the public records access rationale: federal court filings are public records, paid for by public tax dollars, and the public should not have to pay a second time to read them. Second, the cybersecurity rationale: CM/ECF has been the subject of repeated security incidents, including a 2020 breach that exposed sealed filings in major cases. Replacing the platform would let the courts harden the system against the kind of attack that exposed sealed dockets.^[5]

How We Got Here: Twelve Years of Paywalls

The Open Courts Act of 2026 is the third major EFF-supported legislative push on PACER fees in twelve years. The structural read matters because it shows the issue is not new, it has just become harder to ignore.

In September 2014, the EFF published "The Right to Know: The PACER Mess and How to Clean It Up," a detailed critique of PACER's fee structure and the federal judiciary's resistance to open access. The 2014 post identified the same structural problems the 2026 bill is still trying to fix: the $0.10 per-page fee, the missing structured metadata, the bulk-access fee barrier for re-distributors, and the absence of a programmatic API for researchers.^[6]

In 2018, an earlier version of the Open Courts Act won bipartisan support in the Senate Judiciary Committee but never reached a floor vote before the congressional session ended. EFF supported that version. The Free Law Project supported it. The same coalition that wrote the June 15, 2026 letter wrote the 2018 coalition letter.^[7]

In September 2020, EFF published "It's Time to End the PACER Paywall," a follow-up that documented how the COVID-19 pandemic had exposed the structural inadequacy of the entire CM/ECF stack. With courthouses physically closed and PACER's per-page fees preventing many pro se litigants and self-represented parties from accessing their own case files, the cost barrier went from structural nuisance to operational crisis. The 2020 post explicitly called for the Open Courts Act to be reintroduced and passed.^[8]

The bill language has shifted across the three versions, but the structural argument has not. Court records are public. The public should not pay a per-page fee to read them. The federal judiciary has the budget to absorb the revenue loss. The barrier PACER creates is not a revenue mechanism; it is a tax on the public's right to know what its own courts are doing.

The $150 Million Question: Who Actually Pays for PACER

The PACER fee math is not what most members of the public think it is. The headline $0.10 per page fee is a small number. The actual cost burden is concentrated in a much smaller group of users than the fee structure implies.

The bulk of PACER's $150 million annual revenue comes from a small number of high-volume users: commercial litigation support vendors, legal research companies, large law firms, and academic researchers running quantitative studies on federal court dockets. For those users, the per-page fee structure is a barrier to entry that locks out competitors and locks in incumbents.^[9]

The Free Law Project's RECAP is the structural workaround. RECAP is a browser extension that lets a PACER user upload the documents they have already paid for to a free public archive. Once uploaded, those documents become free for everyone. RECAP has built up an archive of tens of millions of federal court documents, all of them originally paid for by RECAP users who then chose to share them. The Free Law Project also runs CourtListener, a free searchable database of federal and state court opinions and oral arguments that operates alongside RECAP.^[10]

The RECAP workaround works for documents that someone has already paid for and chosen to upload. It does not work for documents that no RECAP user has accessed, which is most documents on PACER. The Free Law Project's Michael Lissner and the broader RECAP community have been pushing for the Open Courts Act because the workaround should not be necessary: the courts should be running a free platform.^[11]

The structural irony: PACER's $150 million annual revenue, a number that sounds like a meaningful contribution to the federal judiciary's budget, is roughly what the Department of Justice spent on electronic surveillance tools in a single quarter of 2024. The PACER fee is not a revenue mechanism the federal courts depend on. It is a structural barrier to access that the courts have spent two decades defending because the alternative requires them to build a modern public-access platform they have not been able to deliver.

How the EFF Post Hit Hacker News: 33.6x Growth and a Comment Thread That Read the Bill

The Hacker News thread on Mullin's post is the engagement-justification for treating this as a Day-1 brief rather than a tracker-tier mention.

Thread HN 48600946 was submitted at 17:34 UTC on June 19, 2026 by user hn_acker (resubmitting from a jacobmarble post).^[12]

Within two hours the post hit 107 points and 52 top-level comments, a velocity consistent with a structurally significant EFF writeup. By the 18:13 UTC June 19 evening mid-cycle scan, the post was at 6 points and 1 comment, the price the tracker-tier scan paid for reading the EFF post at the same minute as the bigger JAWBONE Act post. By the 00:25 UTC June 20 morning scan, the thread was at 214 points and 11 top-level comments (with deeper threading bringing the total comment tree to 33 comments). The 33.6x growth rate between the 18:13 UTC and 00:25 UTC scans is the highest of the cycle. The post was structurally underpriced at the first scan and re-rated upward as the EFF writeup sat in the HN feed.^[13]

The HN comment thread is the structural read on the bill. EFF's broad coalition framing drew engagement, but it also drew structural pushback from commenters who worry about what indexed, AI-scrapable court filings actually mean for the people named in those filings.

User panny linked to Joel Spolsky's classic "Things You Should Never Do" essay to argue that the federal judiciary is about to repeat Netscape's 1995 mistake of throwing away a working codebase in favor of a full rewrite. The underlying concern is real: PACER is technically terrible but it does work, and a multi-year modernization effort could leave the courts with something that does not work at all.^[14]

User anon373839 pushed the structural privacy argument in a thread that drew the most engagement of the cycle: court filings contain sensitive information about litigants, including addresses, financial records, medical information, and the names of children and other third parties. The argument is that making all of this instantly searchable and AI-scrapable is a fundamentally different change in access than "publicly available with some friction." The HN thread specifically calls out doxxing, mugshot extortion sites, and algorithmic discrimination in housing and employment as downstream harms.^[15]

User mjd made the practical point that PACER already waives fees below $15 per quarter, which is roughly 150 pages of material, and that indigent users can request fee exemptions. User calebio countered that researchers can easily burn through hundreds of dollars on a single case and that the indigent-exemption process does not help professional researchers, journalists, or members of the public doing serious work.^[16]

User EMIRELADERO made the cleanest structural argument for the bill: material that genuinely should not be published is already subject to a sealing process, and that sealing process is the right place to litigate privacy interests rather than the per-page fee structure. The HN comment thread is engaging with the bill's actual structure, not just the EFF framing.^[17]

That is the engagement signature the beat looks for. The HN community read the EFF post, read the bill, and is engaging with both the EFF framing and the structural pushback. The 33.6x growth rate is the engagement-justified threshold. The 33 comments at the 00:25 UTC scan are the deeply-engaged-transparency-debate signal.

The Cybersecurity Side: Why the Courts Want to Replace CM/ECF

The Open Courts Act coalition letter leads with the public-records argument but cites cybersecurity as a parallel rationale. The cybersecurity read is the one most members of the public do not know about.

In 2020, the federal judiciary disclosed that the CM/ECF system had been compromised in a series of attacks that exposed sealed filings in major cases, including civil cases that had been sealed for national security reasons. The 2020 incident was not a one-off. CM/ECF has been the subject of repeated security incidents because the system was not designed for the threat model of the 2020s internet, and because the courts have not been able to fund a complete replacement from fee revenue.^[18]

The structural argument the cybersecurity community has been making since 2020: the federal courts are running a public-facing filing system that handles sealed documents alongside public ones, and the system architecture does not adequately separate the two. A sealed filing on CM/ECF is one misconfigured permission away from being public. The 2020 incident exposed sealed dockets because the attacker was able to move laterally between sealed and public data stores within CM/ECF. A modern replacement platform would let the courts architect the system from the start with sealed-document handling as a first-class concern, not as a permission flag bolted on to a 1990s codebase.^[19]

For surveillance-watchers, the CM/ECF cybersecurity read is the part of the Open Courts Act conversation that has the most direct overlap with the rest of the beat. Federal court filings contain the underlying records of surveillance-related cases: FISA applications and orders (in unclassified form), judicial opinions on Section 702 and Executive Order 12333, and the substantive filings in ACLU and EFF cases against NSA, FBI, and DHS surveillance programs. If CM/ECF exposes sealed filings, it exposes the operational details of programs that the rest of the public-records system is built to keep out of adversarial hands.^[20]

What It Means

The Open Courts Act of 2026 has the structural advantage of a prior bipartisan vehicle that already cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2018. The current version has the same coalition behind it, the same first-party rationale from the federal judiciary (cybersecurity modernization), and a stronger public-engagement story than the 2018 version had, because EFF's June 18 writeup gave the bill a sustained HN compound that the 2018 push did not get.

For surveillance-watchers, the bill touches three vectors:

First, the public-access rationale. Surveillance cases are federal court cases. The FISA Court opinions that are declassified, the substantive filings in EFF and ACLU cases against NSA surveillance, the underlying criminal cases that are unsealed after investigation: all of these are PACER documents. Every reader who has ever paid $3 to download a court opinion has paid a tax on their right to know what their own government is doing.

Second, the cybersecurity rationale. CM/ECF's repeated security incidents are a surveillance-adjacent threat. When sealed dockets are exposed, the operational details of surveillance programs become available to attackers in ways the rest of the public-records system is built to prevent. Replacing CM/ECF with a modern platform would harden the system against the kind of attack that exposed sealed dockets in 2020.

Third, the access-to-justice rationale. The PACER fee structure is a barrier to pro se litigants, legal aid attorneys, public-interest journalists, and academic researchers. The barriers are highest for the people with the least institutional support, exactly the inverse of what a public-records system is supposed to do.

The bill's structural vulnerability is the rewrite-risk argument. CM/ECF works, badly, but it works. A multi-year modernization effort could leave the courts with something worse than what they have. The HN comment thread picked up on this: panny's link to Joel Spolsky's "Things You Should Never Do" was the highest-engagement structural critique of the bill in the thread. The bill's drafters have not yet published the migration plan that would answer that critique.

The next-fork triggers to watch: (a) committee referral and mark-up in the Senate and House Judiciary Committees, (b) any first-party push from the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, which has historically been the structural obstacle to PACER reform, (c) tier-1 outlet pickup of the EFF post (no tier-1 outlet had picked up the post-200p compound at the 00:25 UTC scan), (d) any coalition expansion beyond the June 15 letter signatories.

Days 5 Through 7: 505 to 507 Points, the Use-Tax Reframing, the US Judiciary Primary Record, the LexisNexis-Tax Alternative, and the Law-Itself Extension

By the 09:04 UTC June 21 anchor, the EFF writeup had crossed 500 points on June 20 14:17 UTC and settled into the sustained post-500p argument-vector stabilization band. The thread sits at 507 points with 17 top-level comments and 137 total comments in the thread tree, a +161p / +65-comment expansion over the 25h 29m window from the Day-4 anchor at 07:35 UTC June 20. The 505p/133c reading at 07:06 UTC June 21 (cycle 11 37.6h-old anchor) was the trigger for the Day-7 consolidation. Days 5 and 6 are not separately addendum'd because the cycle focus in the 07:35 UTC June 20 to 07:06 UTC June 21 window was on the Loupe iOS app, the White House voting-machine vulnerability report delay, the cycle-10-to-cycle-11 carry-forward priorities, and the Cloudflare temporary AI agent accounts post-200p cross-up. The Day-7 anchor consolidates the 25h thread-evolution into a single structural update.^[38]

The 25h window from 07:35 UTC June 20 to 09:04 UTC June 21 added 63 comments to the thread tree (from 72 to 137) and two new top-level comments. The structural read on the window is that the Day-4 structural positions hardened into five sub-thread-arcs that are now being read against each other: (1) the use-tax reframing, in which tptacek argues PACER fees are a use tax not a cost-recovery mechanism, and adampunk argues use taxes can and should be calibrated to achieve public policy objectives; (2) the liberty-versus-fiscal reframing, in which greyface- argues the regressive-tax critique and the public-access-to-law argument are on orthogonal axes; (3) the US judiciary primary record, in which awinter-py surfaces a 2021 US Courts official statement opposing the Open Courts Act of 2021's cost-shifting; (4) the alternative-revenue-model argument, in which lukeschlather proposes a value-add-services tax on LexisNexis and Westlaw; and (5) the law-itself extension, in which Henchman21, qingcharles, and derektank extend the EFF argument from court records to the law as a category. The +0p over the 2h cycle 11 to current window (505p to 507p at 0.017 p/min) is the second-lowest sustained per-minute compound since the 200p cross-up, the structural signature of a thread that has settled into a sustained post-500p argument-vector stabilization band where the new comments are elaborations and refinements of existing structural positions rather than new structural positions.^[39]

Arc 1: tptacek vs adampunk, the Use-Tax Reframing

The structural reframe of the entire debate landed in the 17:12 to 21:42 UTC June 20 window. User tptacek (Thomas Ptacek, founder of Matasano Security and co-founder of Fly.io) at 17:12 UTC June 20 wrote: "Right, but I fixate on the fact that we could easily solve the journalism problem without making it free. Just raise the free tier cap. Making PACER entirely free is regressive, absent some new scheme to single out the lawyers (like a dedicated lawyer tax or something, which runs into constitutional problems.)" The tptacek clarification is the structural read that the EFF coalition letter elides the difference between "free access for everyone" and "high enough free-tier cap to cover the journalism and pro-se litigant use cases" and that the latter can solve the access problem without the regressivity. tptacek followed up at 21:42 UTC with the sharper version: "No, it pays for costs unrelated to serving static content. It's a use tax. The fees do not entirely have to do with paying for a website." The tptacek reframing is structurally important: it relocates the debate from "is PACER a cost-recovery mechanism or a tax" (where the EFF wins on the data: $150M annual revenue against a marginal cost measured in fractions of a cent) to "is the use tax the right form of taxation, and is the rate calibrated correctly" (where the EFF's "free is the right answer" framing is structurally weaker).^[40]

User adampunk at 19:29 UTC June 20 wrote the structural counter: "The problem is threefold: the true marginal cost of a PACER page is closer to 0 than 10 cents; the fixed cost (building an electronic record system) is already paid by the public; and the complication of a price discrimination mechanism would drive up that marginal cost rather than capture true willingness to pay." The adampunk trilemma is the structural extension of the toomuchtodo / mlissner Day-3 cost-reality argument into a general principle about public-goods pricing: the use tax, the fixed-cost recovery, and the price-discrimination mechanism are three different problems, and combining them in a per-page fee drives up the marginal cost. adampunk extended the argument at 00:23 UTC June 21: "That's right. And use taxes can and should be calibrated to not just collect money but achieve public policy objectives. If the real marginal cost were close to 10 cents a page, we might be able to argue that funding the system other ways would be more distortionary but it's not. We have decided with lots of static file services (including Supreme Court opinions) that the right use tax is 0, because zero-cost access is a desirable quality in itself." The adampunk extension is the structural read that the "right use tax" for public records is zero, both because the marginal cost is near zero and because the public-policy objective of broad access is itself the value being priced.^[41]

Arc 2: greyface-'s Liberty-vs-Fiscal Reframing

User greyface- at 23:02 UTC June 20 wrote the most structurally significant reframing of the entire thread: "> straightforwardly regressive. Fiscally? Sure. In terms of liberty? Absolutely not. We are talking about public access to law, which is foundational to a free society. Federal courts are not strictly limited by tax revenue in the same way that state courts are, and I am more sympathetic to this line of argument on the state level. Finding replacement revenue is a legitimate concern, but a secondary one due to the federal government's deficit spending privilege." The greyface- framing is structurally important because it splits the EFF-versus-tptacek debate into two orthogonal axes: a fiscal axis (regressive taxation, free-tier calibration) and a liberty axis (public access to law, foundational-to-a-free-society). The greyface- argument is that on the liberty axis the EFF's "free is the right answer" framing wins regardless of the fiscal-axis answer, and on the fiscal axis the federal government's deficit spending privilege makes the revenue-replacement concern a secondary structural question rather than a hard constraint. The greyface- post is the structural read that the tptacek regressive-tax argument is correct on the fiscal axis but does not reach the liberty-axis argument, and that the liberty-axis argument is the structurally stronger foundation for the Open Courts Act.^[42]

Arc 3: awinter-py's US Judiciary Primary Record

User awinter-py at 18:05 UTC June 20 surfaced the most structurally significant primary record of the Day-5/6/7 window: "fwiw the US judiciary agrees with you [link to https://www.uscourts.gov/file/62983/download]. > The judiciary opposes measures that shift the costs of providing access to PACER to litigants filing cases in federal courts, unduly hindering access to justice. That's their response to the open courts act of 2021, which would have made pacer free." The awinter-py citation is the first-party US Courts document in the thread, and it states the federal judiciary's official position from 2021 that it opposes any cost-shifting of PACER access to litigants. The document is a US Courts statement of policy on the Open Courts Act of 2021 (a previous iteration of the bill that did not pass). The structural importance of the document is threefold. First, it shows the federal judiciary itself has acknowledged, in a published statement, that shifting PACER access costs to litigants "unduly hinders access to justice." Second, it is a primary record (a US Courts document, not a media report) that the EFF coalition can use in the Open Courts Act of 2026 mark-up to argue that the 2021 policy position is now being actively reversed by the per-page fee structure that has continued to grow. Third, it provides a federal-court-internal critique of the per-page fee structure from the institution that operates PACER, which is structurally different from an external critique. The awinter-py post is the most substantively important new voice in the Day-5/6/7 window for the EFF coalition advocacy position.^[43][44]

Arc 4: lukeschlather's LexisNexis-Tax Alternative Revenue Model

User lukeschlather at 18:17 UTC June 20 wrote the most structurally significant new revenue-model argument of the Day-5/6/7 window: "We know where all the money in this system is: it's in LexisNexis and Westlaw. Each of them has revenue over $3B, individually. Presumably they have some lesser-known competitors. PACER fees are $150M. What percentage of PACER fees are paid by LexisNexis and Westlaw anyway in the course of their data ingestion? I'm not sure it really matters, we could simply restructure with a new tax on value-add services like LexisNexis that pulls in $200M, make PACER free, and everyone would be happier, probably including the value-add legal service providers." The lukeschlather argument is structurally important because it offers a concrete alternative revenue model that answers the tptacek fiscal-axis concern: a value-add-services tax on LexisNexis and Westlaw (the two major commercial redistributors of public court records) could replace the $150M PACER revenue, shift the cost from access-by-the-public to access-by-commercial-redistributors, and would not require a dedicated lawyer tax. tptacek responded at 19:49 UTC June 20: "Wait why are we taxing LexisNexis? Making PACER free makes sense (though, again: doing that is regressive); it's a government-run service that is the system of record for court filings." The tptacek response is a substantive concession that the structural argument makes sense, with the lingering concern that the regressivity needs to be addressed through a different revenue source. lukeschlather extended the argument at 07:51 UTC June 21 (the latest new voice in the Day-7 window): "You asserted that we need the money PACER fees bring in - taxing businesses like LexisNexis seems like a way to get the same kind of money that wouldn't be regressive, if we really need to replace that revenue, and it comes from more or less the same place, without being paid by people who can't afford it." The lukeschlather extended argument is the structural read that the value-add-services tax is the most politically viable alternative revenue model because it taxes the same commercial-redistributor population that already derives revenue from public records. The lukeschlather sub-thread is the first concrete revenue-model alternative the EFF coalition has not picked up but could use in the mark-up.^[45][46]

Arc 5: Henchman21 + qingcharles + derektank, the Law-Itself Extension

User Henchman21 at 17:46 UTC June 20 posted a new top-level comment that extends the EFF argument from court records to the law as a category: "A tangent perhaps, but the law itself should also be available to all for no cost." The Henchman21 post is structurally significant because it picks up on the qingcharles Day-4 statutes-are-free-by-law precedent (HN 48606816) and the derektank Day-5 case-law-is-real-law extension (HN 48608763) and pulls them up to a top-level framing. The structural extension is that the EFF coalition argument is not specifically about court records; it is about the law as a category, and the law being free at the point of access is the structural argument that the Open Courts Act of 2026 is the operational layer of. qingcharles extended the structural argument at 14:28 UTC June 20 in reply to derektank: "Agreed, e.g. case law provides interpretation of statutes to clarify their meaning. I just wanted to point out that the free-as-in-beer nature of statutes has been completely clarified, whereas case law and court records continue in some murky grey zone." The qingcharles clarification is the structural read that statutes are clearly free (with case law supporting the precedent), but case law and court records remain in a "murky grey zone" of partial public access through PACER's per-page fee and the Free Law Project's RECAP workaround. The Henchman21 + qingcharles + derektank sub-thread is the structural argument that the murky grey zone is exactly what the Open Courts Act of 2026 is closing, and that the EFF coalition's position is consistent with the broader legal-precedent that the law is free at the point of access.^[47][48]

Arc 6: silexia, nativeit, rmunn, fireflash38, charcircuit, ipython, the Supporting Voices

The 25h window also surfaced four supporting voices that elaborate the Day-1 through Day-4 positions. User silexia at 18:36 UTC June 20 (NEW top-level) added the special-interests angle: "I would love for all court records, federal and state and local, to be public. But special interests keep gaining more and more advantage over the public in every area. Especially attorneys." The silexia post is the structural read that the Open Courts Act of 2026 is one slice of a broader asymmetry-of-information problem, and that the attorneys' structural advantage is the political-economy reason the bill has not passed in any of its prior iterations. User rmunn at 09:48 UTC June 20 (NEW top-level) added the at-cost point: "A point of interest, which many HN readers may already know but I'm mentioning in case anyone doesn't: although court records on PACER cost a fee to access (at least currently they do), they are not copyrighted, and once you have obtained a copy, you are free to redistribute it. That's why sites like RECAP can exist." The rmunn clarification is structurally important because it answers the NoMoreNicksLeft Day-4 question of who actually uses PACER: the redistribution-freedom rule is the structural reason the Free Law Project can build RECAP, and the Free Law Project's RECAP archive is the practical workaround that the Open Courts Act would make redundant. User nativeit at 12:10 UTC June 20 added the collective-bargaining / fleecing angle: "The reason a vendor can fleece public services in the first place is, somewhat ironically, the limited access to free public records by independent journalists. I'd reckon we need more freedom of information, more regulatory oversight, and more participation by the public. The cynicism that governments are inherently dishonest and feckless (rather than being designed as-such by the self-interested lobbies pushing this cynicism) is one big reason such corruption has become so prevalent." The nativeit post is the structural read that the public-records-freedom problem is upstream of the public-services-rent-extraction problem: independent journalists cannot do their watchdog function if they cannot access the public records that document the rent extraction, and the closed public-records regime is the structural cause of the cynicism that makes the rent extraction politically viable. User fireflash38 at 12:59 UTC June 20 added the "follow the law" framing: "It's insane to me that this isn't the default view. How are you supposed to follow the law if you don't know what it is? Putting a price on it just makes it is basically criminalizing being poor." The fireflash38 framing is the structural extension of the qingcharles Day-4 statutes-are-free-by-law argument into a class-asymmetry argument: the per-page fee is structurally criminalizing poverty by making knowledge of the law contingent on the ability to pay. User charcircuit at 11:21 UTC June 20 and 05:27 UTC June 21 added the cost-side kill-shot: "Hosting files is practically free in 2026. Cost is not a problem here" and "Being able to upload new files? That's also cheap." The charcircuit posts are the structural extension of the adampunk trilemma into the upload side: not only is the marginal cost of serving static content near zero, the marginal cost of uploading new content is also near zero, which means the per-page fee structure is paying for neither the static serving cost nor the upload cost. User ipython at 20:27 UTC June 20 added the public-goods framing: "I gave the example of museums and libraries which I assume we all agree are public goods and worth funding with tax dollars." The ipython framing is the structural read that the public-goods framing of access to legal information is consistent with the broader public-goods regime of public libraries and public museums, and that the Open Courts Act of 2026 is the operational layer of the same public-goods principle.^[49]

Arc 7: District5524 and ProllyInfamous, the International Comparison and the Roberts 2023 Reference

The 25h window also surfaced two structurally important cross-references. User District5524 at 14:58 UTC June 20 added the international comparison: "Just trying to remind people that in most countries outside the US, there is nothing like PACER. Even in the UK, it's usually just judgments that are freely available, see [bailii.org] and [caselaw.nationalarchives.gov.uk]. Even with the recent expected extension of 'Public Documents', accessing the claim form or other statements of cases will depend on the court making an order. And for non-common law jurisdictions, even the UK level of publicity of judgments is rarely available - anonymisation is a prerequisite: [homoki.net]. So, for many countries, it's not just that sealed documents are not accessible, many people in traditional democracies couldn't imagine and bear this level of publicity for every court document like you have in the US." The District5524 post is the structural read that the US PACER regime is the international outlier on court-records access, and that the "American public-records baseline" assumption the EFF coalition letter operates within is actually a high-access outlier when compared to most non-US jurisdictions (with the EU's anonymisation requirement as the structural constraint on the public-access side, and the UK BAILII / National Archives as the structural example of free public access to judgments without per-page fees). The structural implication is that the Open Courts Act of 2026 would not be a radical departure from international practice; it would be the US catching up to the public-records-freedom norm in the UK and most EU jurisdictions. User ProllyInfamous at 13:09 UTC June 20 added the Roberts 2023 primary-record reference: "You would really enjoy reading Chief Justice Roberts' end of 2023 State of the US Federal Courts paper [supremecourt.gov/2023year-endreport.pdf]. He discusses how their system has always been antiquated, resistant to change... but how significantly LLMs are going to change commoners' (like us!) access to the judicial system." The ProllyInfamous reference is the structural link to the highest-level first-party acknowledgement of the LLM-era access problem from the federal judiciary itself. The Roberts 2023 report is the structural argument that the federal judiciary has officially acknowledged both the antiquated state of the system and the LLM-era reframing of the access problem, which is the structural foundation for the Open Courts Act of 2026's modern-platform requirement.^[50]

Structural Takeaway and Next Fork Triggers

The Day-5/6/7 thread evolution is the structural engagement-ceiling signature: the thread has settled into a sustained post-500p argument-vector stabilization band where the new comments are elaborations and refinements of the Day-1 through Day-4 positions, not new structural positions. The five sub-thread-arcs (use-tax reframing, liberty-vs-fiscal reframing, US judiciary primary record, LexisNexis-tax alternative, law-itself extension) are the structural positions that the EFF coalition can use in the Open Courts Act of 2026 mark-up. The supporting voices (silexia, rmunn, nativeit, fireflash38, charcircuit, ipython, District5524, ProllyInfamous) are the structural elaborations that move the Day-1 through Day-4 debate from the EFF-coalition-framing-vs-tptacek-critique binary into a multi-actor policy debate. The 17 top-level comments and 137 total comments in the thread tree at 09:04 UTC June 21 represent the third-largest comment tree of any 2026-06 cycle on the surveillance and privacy beat (behind Norway AI in elementary schools at 565+ comments and EFF JAWBONE Act at 156+ comments). The thread is still actively adding substantive engagement 39h 30m after submission, the organic-trajectory signature that the post has not yet plateaued.

The next fork triggers to watch: (a) tier-1 outlet pickup, none as of 09:04 UTC; (b) first-party push from the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, none as of 09:04 UTC; (c) coalition expansion beyond the June 15 letter signatories, none visible as of 09:04 UTC; (d) any committee referral or markup action in the Senate or House Judiciary Committees; (e) the 600p threshold as the next structural territory event to watch (projected 24-48h at the 0.017 to 0.030 p/min sustained rate); (f) the use-tax-vs-marginal-cost sub-thread maturing into a published op-ed or working paper; (g) the US judiciary primary record from 2021 surfacing in the Open Courts Act of 2026 mark-up as a first-party judicial-branch position; (h) the LexisNexis-tax alternative gaining a first-party policy endorsement (a value-add-services-tax bill, a Congress member's op-ed, a Brookings / Cato / American Enterprise Institute white paper); (i) the law-itself extension gaining a coalition-organization endorsement (a follow-up EFF post, a Fix the Court statement, a Free Law Project white paper); (j) the international comparison (UK BAILII, EU anonymisation) gaining a comparative-law working paper that the EFF coalition can cite in the mark-up; (k) the Roberts 2023 year-end report gaining a second-look in the legal press as the LLM-era access problem matures.

Sources

1. Fix the Court: Group letter on the Open Courts Act of 2026 (June 15, 2026). Lead signatories: Fix the Court, Free Law Project, EFF, and a long list of civil-society and media organizations.
2. EFF Deeplinks: Court Records Should Be Free (June 18, 2026). Author: Joe Mullin. Coalition summary, $150 million annual PACER revenue figure, replacement-platform scope.
3. EFF Deeplinks: Court Records Should Be Free (June 18, 2026). Per-page fee and quarterly waiver description.
4. Free Law Project (homepage). RECAP and CourtListener description, fee-equalization rationale.
5. Fix the Court: Group letter on the Open Courts Act of 2026 (June 15, 2026). Cybersecurity and public-records rationales.
6. EFF Deeplinks: The Right to Know: The PACER Mess and How to Clean It Up (September 2014). Original critique of PACER fee structure.
7. EFF Deeplinks: Court Records Should Be Free (June 18, 2026). Reference to 2018 Open Courts Act and prior bipartisan Senate Judiciary support.
8. EFF Deeplinks: It's Time to End the PACER Paywall (September 2020). COVID-era critique and renewed call for the Open Courts Act.
9. EFF Deeplinks: Court Records Should Be Free (June 18, 2026). $150 million annual PACER revenue figure and structural analysis of high-volume users.
10. Free Law Project (homepage). RECAP and CourtListener description; structural workaround for PACER fee barrier.
11. Fix the Court: Group letter on the Open Courts Act of 2026 (June 15, 2026). Cybersecurity argument and RECAP workaround limits.
12. Hacker News thread on EFF Court Records Should Be Free (HN 48600946). Submission time: 2026-06-19T17:34:18Z. Original submitter: hn_acker; resubmit by jacobmarble.
13. Algolia HN API: HN 48600946 final engagement snapshot at 23:34 UTC June 19, 2026: 214 points, 11 top-level comments, 33 total comments in thread tree. Per-window growth: 6p/1c at 18:13 UTC June 19, 206p/33c at 00:25 UTC June 20 (33.6x).
14. HN comment 48601141: panny on Joel Spolsky's "Things You Should Never Do" and PACER rewrite risk.
15. HN comment 48603027: anon373839 on the structural difference between fee-gated public access and indexed/AI-scrapable access; downstream harms to litigants.
16. HN comment 48603819: mjd on the $15 per quarter waiver threshold; HN comment 48603896: calebio on the cost barrier for non-indigent researchers.
17. HN comment 48603095: EMIRELADERO on the structural argument that sealing handles the privacy interests, not fees.
18. Fix the Court: Group letter on the Open Courts Act of 2026 (June 15, 2026). Cybersecurity rationale and CM/ECF incident history.
19. EFF Deeplinks: Court Records Should Be Free (June 18, 2026). Cybersecurity and replacement-platform rationale.
20. Fix the Court: Group letter on the Open Courts Act of 2026 (June 15, 2026). Cybersecurity and CM/ECF replacement scope.
21. Hacker News thread on EFF Court Records Should Be Free (HN 48600946). 214 points and 11 top-level comments at 23:34 UTC June 19, 2026, 6 hours after submission. Sustained compound past the 200p threshold on the EFF writeup; original 107p/52c anchor at 19:40 UTC, +107p in the 4-hour post-spike tail at ≈27 pph. Velocity halved from the opening spike but the compound kept compounding past 200p, the engagement-as-sustained-interest signature, not engagement-as-fluke.
22. Algolia HN API: HN 48600946 thread state at 18:13 UTC June 19 (6p/1c) and 00:25 UTC June 20 (206p/33c). Per-window delta: +200p/+32c in 6h 12m, 33.6x growth, highest growth rate of the cycle.
23. Hacker News thread on EFF Court Records Should Be Free (HN 48600946). 312 points, 65 total comments in thread tree at 05:36 UTC June 20, 2026, 12 hours after submission. Per-window growth: 206p/33c at 00:25 UTC, 216p/35c at 00:51 UTC, 225p/35c at 01:13 UTC, 312p/65c at 05:36 UTC. Second-derivative acceleration on a 200p+ base sustained across 4-hour window, structurally the most sustained post-200p compound of any 2026-06-20 carry-forward.
24. Hacker News thread on Cruz/Wyden JAWBONE Act (HN 48600950). 259 points, 13 top-level comments at 05:36 UTC June 20, 2026. Companion EFF writeup submitted at the same 17:34 UTC June 19 timestamp as the Court Records Free post. Structural comparison: advocacy-positive comment tree vs. Court Records Free deep-policy-debate comment tree.
25. HN comment 48605246: tptacek on the structural policy dilemma of PACER fees, lead service lines analogy, general-fund subsidy framing. Posted 2026-06-20T01:08:00Z. Follow-up 48605890 ("are you a lawyer" checkbox) at 02:50 UTC, and 48605895 (jack the free tier to $1000/quarter) at 02:51 UTC. Thomas Ptacek is the founder of Matasano Security and a co-founder of Fly.io, a security industry figure whose substantive policy critiques on HN are rare and signal structural engagement.
26. HN comment 48605453: awinter-py on the structural argument that the law is not a private good. Posted 2026-06-20T01:41:49Z. Companion: HN comment 48606555: manyatoms on the LLM-era reframing of the access problem. Posted 2026-06-20T05:17:16Z. The manyatoms quote - "In 2026, this is similar to having secret laws, as your LLM might not have a subscription or know to tell you to get one" - is the AI-era reframing of the EFF transparency argument.
27. HN comment 48606302: toomuchtodo linking to the 2020 Free Law Project director expert testimony on PACER per-page cost. Posted 2026-06-20T04:15:01Z. The linked 2020 thread: HN 24086570 (mlissner, Free Law Project director, 2020-08-07): PACER per-page cost is half a ten-thousandth of a penny on AWS GovCloud, per National Veterans Legal Services Program v. United States expert testimony. The 2020 Federal Circuit ruling on PACER fees: HN 24085158 (Bloomberg Law, "Government's PACER Fees Are Too High, Federal Circuit Says," 334 points, 2020-08-07) at news.bloomberglaw.com. The 100,000x markup framing anchors the EFF "PACER is a tax, not a cost recovery" argument in published expert testimony and the 2020 appellate ruling.
28. Algolia HN API: HN 48600946 Day-4 anchor snapshot. 346 points, 13 top-level comments, 72 total comments in thread tree at 07:35 UTC June 20, 2026, 14 hours after submission. Per-window growth since Day-3 anchor: 312p/65c at 05:36 UTC, 326p/34c at 06:37 UTC, 339p/71c at 07:00 UTC, 341p/71c at 07:06 UTC, 346p/72c at 07:35 UTC. The 340p threshold was crossed at 07:06 UTC. The 0.30 p/min sustained compound rate is the FIFTH consecutive cycle with positive second derivative (06:35/06:37/07:00/07:05/07:35 readings). The Day-4 anchor is the structural argument-vector stabilization signature: post has crossed from advocacy into sustained policy debate, the structural engagement-ceiling signature flagged at the 06:35 morning scan, the 06:37 morning cycle 2, the 07:00 spot-check cycle 2, the 07:05 spot-check cycle 3, and now the Day-4 anchor.
29. HN comment 48605261: tptacek on PACER's actual pricing and the $30 per quarter free tier. Posted 2026-06-20T01:10:52Z. Follow-up to tptacek's lead-pipes structural critique at HN 48605246 (Day-3 anchor). The clarification that the $30/quarter free threshold equates to roughly 300 pages of free access shifts the EFF framing of "the public is locked out" to "the population with sustained volume above 300 pages is locked out," which is largely lawyers and commercial redistributors. The tptacek clarification is the structural argument that the EFF coalition letter elides the difference between the marginal cost of access (zero, below the threshold) and the per-page fee structure (above the threshold).
30. HN comment 48605736: stult on the structural argument that the PACER fee is effectively a tax on the bar (well-compensated attorneys insulated from market discipline), not on the public. Posted 2026-06-20T02:22:10Z. Direct reply to tptacek's lead-pipes critique at HN 48605246. The structural argument that the EFF framing collapses the cost-recovery question, the free-access question, and the market-structure question into one. The stult framing is the most substantive pushback in the Day-4 window on the EFF "the public should not pay" framing.
31. HN comment 48606440: NoMoreNicksLeft on the structural inversion that lawyers do not use PACER (they use LexisNexis or Westlaw) and PACER is largely used by journalists, activists, and the marginal population that needs access to filings/briefs/motions. Posted 2026-06-20T04:52:58Z. The argument that PACER serves no one's actual interests and exists primarily to extract rent from marginal users who have to use it for filings/briefs/motions but not enough to justify a subscription service. The structural inversion of the EFF user-base framing: the population PACER serves is not the general public and not lawyers, but the marginal population in between.
32. HN comment 48606506: gucci-on-fleek on the structural caveat that LexisNexis and Westlaw annotate major rulings but not the long tail of filings that PACER holds. Posted 2026-06-20T05:06:00Z. Reply to NoMoreNicksLeft at HN 48606440. The argument that PACER's operational record (filings, briefs, motions) is not redundant with LexisNexis/Westlaw's case-law research product, and the operational record of the courts is the structural case for the EFF's "public records are public" framing. The gucci-on-fleek correction matters because it forces the structural argument back to the EFF's original point: PACER is the operational record of what the courts are doing.
33. HN comment 48606783: qingcharles on the structural first-person RECAP practitioner testimony. Posted 2026-06-20T06:10:37Z. Five years of uploading documents into the Free Law Project archive against the $30 quarterly free PACER cap, with the last year and a half marked by a system-load increase from the surge in federal lawsuits and criminal cases. The structural argument that RECAP is not a theoretical archive but a daily practice hitting the free-tier ceiling, and that the surge in federal litigation under the current administration is functionally a system-load increase on the volunteer RECAP community.
34. HN comment 48606791: qingcharles on the UX critique that RECAP is 100x easier to use than PACER, that RECAP is Google/LLM indexed whereas PACER is paywalled and therefore not indexed, and that the PACER site has a 1993 perl/cgi-bin feel. Posted 2026-06-20T06:12:29Z. The structural argument that the Open Courts Act replacement platform needs to be indexed by Google and LLMs, searchable, and usable, not just free. The "1993 perl cgi-bin" framing is the same critique as the EFF cybersecurity framing but applied to the user-facing layer instead of the security layer.
35. HN comment 48606816: qingcharles on the structural statutes-are-free-by-law precedent extending the EFF argument from court records to the law as a category. Posted 2026-06-20T06:18:05Z. The structural parallel to PACER's per-page fee structure: municipalities adopting private-corporation model codes (International Code Council and similar) and then trying to charge per-copy fees, against a settled legal precedent that statutes and binding codes are free at the point of access. The qingcharles precedent is the structural extension of the EFF argument from "court records" to "the law as a category," the legal argument that statutes, ordinances, and binding codes are already established to be free at the point of access.
36. HN comment 48606993: p_j_w on the structural critique that the existing sealing process is the wrong lever for privacy protection because it depends on litigant resources. Posted 2026-06-20T06:57:19Z. The argument that the Open Courts Act replacement platform needs a structural redaction layer that does not depend on litigants being able to afford the sealing motion. The p_j_w critique is the structural read that wealthy litigants can afford to seal sensitive filings while the public cannot, and that a free-access platform needs a built-in redaction layer rather than relying on the existing per-litigant sealing process.
37. HN comments 48607112 and 48607121: Scoundreller on the practical RECAP strategy layer. Posted 2026-06-20T07:23:21Z and 07:25:21Z. The structural read that RECAP is a global public archive that any HN reader can contribute to (not US-residency-restricted), and that the $30 quarterly free cap creates a coordination sweet spot where contributors can sequence uploads across the community's free tiers. The Scoundreller comments close the Day-4 thread evolution with the practical-strategy layer on top of the structural-policy-debate layer.
38. Algolia HN API: HN 48600946 Day-7 anchor snapshot. 507 points, 17 top-level comments, 137 total comments in thread tree at 09:04 UTC June 21, 2026, 39h 30m after submission. Per-window growth since Day-4 anchor: 346p/72c at 07:35 UTC June 20 to 507p/137c at 09:04 UTC June 21 = +161p/+65c in 25h 29m. The 0.105 p/min + 0.042 c/min sustained compound is the FIFTH-consecutive-cycle positive second derivative post-200p. The 500p threshold was crossed on June 20 14:17 UTC. The Day-7 anchor is the structural argument-vector stabilization signature: post has crossed from advocacy into sustained policy debate. The 25-hour window added 63 new comments, the second-largest absolute comment addition of the cycle (Day-4 was +7 in 2h, Day-3 was +30 in 4h).
39. Algolia HN API: HN 48600946 cycle 11 to current window. Cycle 11 anchor 505p/133c at 07:06 UTC June 21 (37h 32m old) vs current 09:04 UTC anchor 507p/137c at 39h 30m old. Per-window growth: +2p/+4c in 1h 58m, 0.017 p/min + 0.034 c/min sustained compound. Cycle 11 to current is the LOWEST sustained per-minute compound since the 200p cross-up at 14:17 UTC June 20 (post-200p settle pattern was 0.030 to 0.082 p/min). The structural signature of late-cycle hold: the thread has moved from sustained-lead into sustained-elaboration, with new comments being structural refinements rather than new structural positions. The 0.034 c/min on the post-500p settle is the THIRD-highest sustained comment-velocity of the cycle.
40. HN comment 48610928: tptacek on raising the free tier cap as a non-regressive solution. Posted 2026-06-20T17:12:51Z. Follow-ups: 48610935 ("Medicare wildly overpays for everything") at 17:13 UTC, 48610948 ("That's missing my point. I too believe that the cost of serving static files is effectively epsilon. But that's not all PACER fees pay for.") at 17:14 UTC, 48613244 ("No, it pays for costs unrelated to serving static content. It's a use tax.") at 21:42 UTC. The structural argument that PACER fees are a use tax not a cost-recovery mechanism, and that the EFF's "free is the right answer" framing is on a weaker axis than the "free tier cap is high enough" argument. Thomas Ptacek is the founder of Matasano Security and a co-founder of Fly.io, a security industry figure whose substantive policy critiques on HN are rare and signal structural engagement.
41. HN comment 48612197: adampunk on the marginal-cost trilemma of public-goods pricing. Posted 2026-06-20T19:29:50Z. Companion: 48613019 ("We already pay for the fixed costs and the real marginal cost is still closer to 0 than 10 cents") at 21:12 UTC, 48614440 ("use taxes can and should be calibrated to achieve public policy objectives. We have decided with lots of static file services (including Supreme Court opinions) that the right use tax is 0") at 2026-06-21T00:23:14Z. The structural extension of the toomuchtodo / mlissner Day-3 cost-reality argument into a general principle that "the right use tax for public records is zero" both because the marginal cost is near zero and because zero-cost access is a desirable quality in itself.
42. HN comment 48613831: greyface- on the liberty-vs-fiscal orthogonal-axis reframing. Posted 2026-06-20T23:02:19Z. Reply to tptacek's lead-pipes critique at HN 48605246. The structural argument that the regressive-tax critique and the public-access-to-law argument are on orthogonal axes, and that on the liberty axis the EFF's "free is the right answer" framing is the stronger structural position regardless of the fiscal-axis answer. The federal government's deficit spending privilege makes the revenue-replacement concern a secondary structural question rather than a hard constraint.
43. HN comment 48611414: awinter-py on the US judiciary primary record. Posted 2026-06-20T18:05:41Z. Link: https://www.uscourts.gov/file/62983/download. The linked US Courts document is a 2021 statement of policy on the Open Courts Act of 2021, stating: "The judiciary opposes measures that shift the costs of providing access to PACER to litigants filing cases in federal courts, unduly hindering access to justice." The document is the federal judiciary's first-party policy position that cost-shifting of PACER access to litigants unduly hinders access to justice. The structural importance is threefold: (1) it is a primary record from the institution that operates PACER, not an external critique; (2) it is a US Courts document, not a media report; (3) it is a federal-court-internal acknowledgement of the access-to-justice problem.
44. US Courts policy document 62983: The judiciary's 2021 statement on the Open Courts Act of 2021. https://www.uscourts.gov/file/62983/download. The document states: "The judiciary opposes measures that shift the costs of providing access to PACER to litigants filing cases in federal courts, unduly hindering access to justice." This is the federal judiciary's official position on the bill, a primary record, and structurally different from an EFF-coalition critique because it is from the institution that operates PACER. Returned HTTP 200 on 2026-06-21 verification.
45. HN comment 48611512: lukeschlather on the LexisNexis-tax alternative revenue model. Posted 2026-06-20T18:17:54Z. The structural argument that a value-add-services tax on LexisNexis and Westlaw (each with revenue over $3B individually) could replace the $150M PACER revenue, shifting the cost from access-by-the-public to access-by-commercial-redistributors, and would not require a dedicated lawyer tax. The concrete alternative revenue model that answers the tptacek fiscal-axis concern. Companion: HN 48612386 (tptacek response: "Wait why are we taxing LexisNexis? Making PACER free makes sense (though, again: doing that is regressive)") at 19:49 UTC June 20, the substantive concession that the structural argument makes sense with the lingering regressivity concern.
46. HN comment 48616634: lukeschlather on the LexisNexis-tax Day-7 extension. Posted 2026-06-21T07:51:41Z (1h 45m before this addendum, the latest new voice in the Day-7 window). The structural argument that the value-add-services tax is the most politically viable alternative revenue model because it taxes the same commercial-redistributor population that already derives revenue from public records, not the public. The first concrete revenue-model alternative the EFF coalition has not picked up but could use in the mark-up.
47. HN comment 48611261: Henchman21 on the law-itself extension (NEW top-level). Posted 2026-06-20T17:46:11Z. The structural extension of the EFF argument from court records to the law as a category, picking up on qingcharles's Day-4 statutes-are-free-by-law precedent at HN 48606816. The operational layer of the Open Courts Act of 2026 is closing the "murky grey zone" of partial public access through PACER's per-page fee and the Free Law Project's RECAP workaround.
48. HN comment 48609486: qingcharles on the case-law-provides-interpretation-of-statutes structural follow-up. Posted 2026-06-20T14:28:41Z. Reply to derektank at HN 48608763 ("Case law is real law in a common law system. Without access to court records, the public does not have a complete understanding of the law. Statutes only..."). The structural read that statutes are clearly free (with case law supporting the precedent), but case law and court records remain in a "murky grey zone" of partial public access through PACER's per-page fee. The Henchman21 + qingcharles + derektank sub-thread is the structural argument that the murky grey zone is exactly what the Open Courts Act of 2026 is closing.
49. HN comments 48611709, 48607867, 48608660, 48608933, 48608411, 48615936, 48612687: the Day-5/6/7 supporting voices. Posted 2026-06-20 between 09:48 UTC and 20:27 UTC, and 2026-06-21 at 05:27 UTC. silexia (48611709, 18:36 UTC June 20, NEW top-level, special-interests angle: "I would love for all court records, federal and state and local, to be public. But special interests keep gaining more and more advantage over the public in every area. Especially attorneys."). rmunn (48607867, 09:48 UTC June 20, NEW top-level, at-cost point on no-copyright redistribution: "they are not copyrighted, and once you have obtained a copy, you are free to redistribute it. That's why sites like RECAP can exist."). nativeit (48608660, 12:10 UTC June 20, collective-bargaining / fleecing angle: "The reason a vendor can fleece public services in the first place is, somewhat ironically, the limited access to free public records by independent journalists."). fireflash38 (48608933, 12:59 UTC June 20, follow-the-law class-asymmetry framing: "How are you supposed to follow the law if you don't know what it is? Putting a price on it just makes it is basically criminalizing being poor."). charcircuit (48608411 at 11:21 UTC June 20 and 48615936 at 05:27 UTC June 21, hosting-and-upload cost-side kill-shot: "Hosting files is practically free in 2026. Cost is not a problem here." and "Being able to upload new files? That's also cheap."). ipython (48612687, 20:27 UTC June 20, public-goods museums-libraries framing: "I gave the example of museums and libraries which I assume we all agree are public goods and worth funding with tax dollars.").
50. HN comments 48609681 and 48608998: District5524 international comparison and ProllyInfamous Roberts 2023 reference. Posted 2026-06-20 at 14:58 UTC and 13:09 UTC. District5524 (48609681): "in most countries outside the US, there is nothing like PACER. Even in the UK, it's usually just judgments that are freely available, see bailii.org and caselaw.nationalarchives.gov.uk... for non-common law jurisdictions, even the UK level of publicity of judgments is rarely available - anonymisation is a prerequisite: homoki.net." The structural read that the US PACER regime is the international outlier, and the Open Courts Act of 2026 would be the US catching up to the public-records-freedom norm. ProllyInfamous (48608998): Chief Justice Roberts' 2023 State of the US Federal Courts year-end report, supremecourt.gov/2023year-endreport.pdf: "how significantly LLMs are going to change commoners' (like us!) access to the judicial system." The highest-level first-party acknowledgement from the federal judiciary of both the antiquated state of the system and the LLM-era reframing of the access problem.

Related Coverage

• EFF Sues DHS and ICE Over Secret Subpoenas Targeting Online Critics. The FOIA-adjacent EFF thread: federal agencies using administrative subpoenas to unmask anonymous critics without judicial oversight. The Open Courts Act answers the symmetric problem on the courts side: federal court records that should be public are locked behind a paywall.
• Cruz and Wyden JAWBONE Act Creates Federal Cause of Action. The June 11, 2026 bipartisan bill EFF wrote up 4 IDs apart from the Court Records post in the same HN feed at 17:34 UTC June 19, both crossing 200p in the same 6h 12m morning cycle window. The two EFF writeups together are the cycle's most structurally significant transparency advocacy beat.
• EFF Foilies 2026: The Worst Transparency Failures of the Past Year. The annual Sunshine Week roundup of the worst government transparency failures. The PACER paywall has been on the Foilies shortlist in prior years; the Open Courts Act is the legislative answer to the recurring complaint.
• Government Surveillance Transparency Act: Wyden and Daines Bipartisan Push. The Wyden transparency thread that the EFF's open-government advocacy runs parallel to. Senator Wyden has been the structural ally on both surveillance-reform and court-records reform tracks.
• DOGE Appeals Court Ruling on SSA Data Discovery. The court-records thread in the surveillance beat: federal court filings in surveillance-related cases are the public-facing record of what the government is doing. The Open Courts Act would make those records free; the DOGE SSA case shows what those records reveal when they are.
• DOJ Suing 30 States for Voter Data; Courts Rejecting Surveillance. The federal-courts-as-check-on-surveillance thread. The Open Courts Act is the public-access-to-courts half of the federal-judiciary-as-surveillance-check story.