[Infowarrior] - 1.8 million pages of federal case law to become freely available

[Richard Forno]

1.8 million pages of federal case law to become freely available.

http://public.resource.org/case_law_announcement.html

WASHINGTON, D.C. / SEBASTOPOL, CA‹November 14, 2007‹Public.Resource.Org and
Fastcase, Inc. announced today that they will release a large and free
archive of federal case law, including all Courts of Appeals decisions from
1950 to the present and all Supreme Court decisions since 1754. The archive
will be public domain and usable by anyone for any purpose.

³The U.S. judiciary has allowed their entire work product to be locked up
behind a cash register,² said Carl Malamud, CEO of Public.Resource.Org. ³Law
is the operating system of our society and today's agreement means anybody
can read the source for a substantial amount of case law that was previously
unavailable.²

Fastcase, the leading developer of next-generation American legal research,
has agreed to provide Public.Resource.Org with 1.8 million pages of federal
case law. This is a marked departure for the online legal research industry,
which traditionally has charged expensive subscription fees to access this
information.

³For eight years, Fastcase has been ahead of the market curve, working to
democratize access to the law,² said Ed Walters, CEO of Fastcase, Inc. ³At
the same time, we have been advancing the science of search, combining the
precision of traditional legal research with the simplicity of Web-based
searches.²

Fastcase has reversed the traditional subscription model for lawyers,
contracting directly with 11 state bar associations to make the national law
library free for lawyers in their states. ³Through this agreement with
Public.Resource.Org, we are proud to expand our efforts beyond lawyers, and
to make more of the law available to the general public at no cost,² Walters
said.

The agreement calls for definitive paperwork approved by both parties within
30 days with Public.Resource.Org making developer snapshots of the archive
available in early 2008. Public.Resource.Org is represented by the
Electronic Frontier Foundation in this transaction. The cases will be marked
with a new Creative Commons mark‹CC-Ø‹that signals that there are no
copyrights or other related rights attached to the content.

This transaction represents a one-time purchase of a copy of data. This
corpus will be integrated into the ongoing public services from
organizations such as AltLaw and the Legal Information Institute, thus
providing continuity of coverage into the future. Further announcements will
be forthcoming on the availability of other case law, including Federal
District and pre-1949 Appellate decisions.

Public.Resource.Org intends to perform an initial transformation on the
federal case law archive obtained from Fastcase using open source ³star²
mapping software, which will allow the insertion of markers that will
approximate page breaks based on user-furnished parameters such as page
size, margins, and fonts. ³Wiki² technology will be used to allow the public
to move around these ³star² markers, as well as add summaries,
classifications, keywords, alternate numbering systems for citation
purposes, and ratings or ³diggs² on opinions.

Media Contacts
Lisa Miller     Carl Malamud
Fleishman-Hillard/Fastcase, Inc.     Public.Resource.Org
+1.202.857.2209     +1.707.827.7290
lisa.miller at fleishman.com     carl at media dot org

About Fastcase

Fastcase is the leading American provider of next-generation legal research,
making the law accessible to more people by providing the national law
library at a fraction of the cost of traditional companies. Using patented
software that combines the best of legal research with the best of Web
search, Fastcase helps busy legal professionals sift through the clutter,
ranking the best cases first and enabling users to re-sort results to find
answers fast. Founded in 1999, Fastcase has more than 275,000 paid
subscribers from around the world. It is an American company based in
Washington, D.C. For more information, visit www.fastcase.com.

About Public.Resource.Org

Public.Resource.Org was founded in 2007 to spearhead the creation of public
works projects for the Internet. A 501(c)(3) registered public charity,
Public.Resource.Org has worked across all three branches of the U.S.
government to enhance the public domain.

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