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If court data is made available on the internet, do you think users should be charged
To quote the Ohio Court of Appeals, "(t)he basic tenet . . . is that a person does not come "like a serf" hat in hand, seeking permission of the lord to have access to public records. Access to public records is a matter of right." The information being provided does not have any value added. It is the basic, over the counter data that anyone could obtain by walking to the counter or calling the clerk and it is felt that charging for Internet access to Court data would be discriminatory to people from out of town who cannot easily or economically contact the clerk directly.
Additionally, many comments focused on the fact that the information available through Westlaw and Lexis is far superior to that which the court could provide, and therefore, if there were a charge involved, the users would simply contact the clerk for the "public" data rather than pay the extra costs . . . and then utilize the superior Westlaw and Lexis resources for the remainder.
The general assumption is that the costs associated with utilizing the Internet as the fast, efficient delivery mechanism for "public" data will be more than offset by the benefit in reducing clerk's time spent with attorneys, litigants and others on the phone and at the front desk, and therefore, no "charge" would be required. Each question answered by a machine would be money saved by the Court and State. One user went as far as to suggest - "You should pay US".