FYI RECAP means you're technically in violation of PACER's terms of use which prohibit redistribution or publishing.
Violating terms laid forth by the federal court system ends (for wealthy internet tech celebrities) in the EFF picking up your legal tab and the FBI saying "okay FINE, just don't do that again."
For you and me, it ends in tens of thousands in legal costs and at best probation terms that likely substantially interfere with your ability to make a living.
> Some courts such as the District Court for the District of Massachusetts have explicitly stated that "fee exempt PACER users must refrain from the use of RECAP,"[13]
I'm not sure if this is binding, or applies to fee-paying users.
Generalia specialibus non derogant so yeah, the warning was specifically for fee-exempt (like if a judge gives you research waiver from the $.10 fee because you're indigent, pro se etc.) users.
Is sharing court documents a violation of copyright law?
The court-created documents provided by PACER are works of the federal government, and under copyright law, are automatically placed in the public domain and may be shared without legal restriction. The question is a little bit more complicated for documents filed by third parties, so we asked a prominent legal scholar about it. He told us that such documents may be under copyright, but he thought redistributing copyrighted court documents was legal under copyright's fair use doctrine. However, there is very little case law in this area (some examples are here and here), so it's impossible to be sure. We certainly believe citizens ought to have the freedom to share public court documents, and we hope RECAP users will help to establish that precedent.
The PACER "policies and procedures" prohibit "any attempt to collect data from PACER in a manner which avoids billing." Is this what RECAP is designed to do?
Absolutely not. PACER charges users for the documents they download from PACER. RECAP users pay for every document they download from PACER, just like any other user. RECAP simply gives users a second option: to easily share documents directly with one another, as they're permitted to do under copyright law. When a user downloads a RECAP document, the document comes directly from our server; the process imposes no additional load on PACER's web servers.
This very much assumes the person is within US jurisdiction, correct? What would happen if the archive is based in Russia or some similar country that doesn't care about US jurisdiction?
Violating terms laid forth by the federal court system ends (for wealthy internet tech celebrities) in the EFF picking up your legal tab and the FBI saying "okay FINE, just don't do that again."
For you and me, it ends in tens of thousands in legal costs and at best probation terms that likely substantially interfere with your ability to make a living.