So, what is RECAP? RECAP is a free extension for Firefox that improves the experience of using PACER, the electronic public access system for the U.S. Federal District and Bankruptcy Courts. It helps you give back by contributing to a public archive hosted by the Internet Archive. It also saves you money by showing you when free documents are available.
When a RECAP user purchases a document from PACER, the RECAP extension helps her automatically send a copy of that document to the RECAP archive. And RECAP saves its users money by notifying them when documents they’re searching for are already available for free from the public archive.
Whos is behind RECAP? RECAP is a project of the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University. It was developed by Harlan Yu, Steve Schultze, and Timothy B. Lee, under the supervision of Prof. Ed Felten.
There is a video on the RECAP website that provides a quick demonstration of RECAP in action, and RECAP is currently looking for beta testers. If you are interested, check out their privacy policy and then head to the installation page to get started.
I think that RECAP is inspired! It is a great way to open up public court records that would otherwise be unavailable because of the PACER “pay to play” restrictions. Everyone should have access to public records.
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