New bill may finally end PACER paywall

Republican Doug Collins (R-Ga) has introduced legislation that would require that the courts make PACER documents available for download free of charge.  The PACER system, which has been available on the web since the late 1990s, currently charges 10 cents per page.  To develop the system back in the 90s, Congress authorized the courts to charge users for it, but now, with the plunging costs of bandwidth and storage, and many documents available for free on the internet, these fees seem to be out of step.  Especially since the judiciary has made such a profit from PACER.  The amount of fees collected each year climbed from $102.5 million in 2010 to $146.4 million in 2016!   Click here to read more about this new bill introduced on September 6th.