I often encounter this same problem of government charging exhorbitant fees to gain access to what shoud be free or low cost public records.

For example, the Alabama Secretary of States Office wants to charge me $28K for CD with a copy of their state-wide voter registration file, in spite of their Attorney General's opinion letters which state they are only permitted to charge actual duplication costs. I have been forced to hire an AL attorney and will explore the possibility of recovering the illegal fees they have charged to other requestors.

After using some other state courts' e-filing systems, I find that PACER - though not exactly feature-packed - is a pretty good system.

Sure, it's not flashy, but it works and eight cents a page for document retrieval is a bargain compared to, say, DC Superior Court's system, which charges you over $15 for each filing (plus another $20 for motions) and doesn't allow you to get any document from before you entered an appearance into the case.

Seriously, $2.40 a document is the very definition of a nominal fee, and is an outright bargain for access to public records.

All that said, I think this plugin is great, and I will use it.

I'm not a lawyer and don't use PACER. That said, in today's world of electronic document storage and retrieval, why does there have to be any charge at all? Automated systems often reduce the actual cost of retrieval below what it costs to collect the fee. Of course, fees do keep the rabble from actually reading what some of the courts are doing.

Pacer's fees are to pay the costs of the system. That said, there is language in the bill that initially authorized Pacer that can be read as requiring free access. I think I saw somewhere that someone was suing the Fed judicial system to remove the charge. Can't remember where I saw it.