> Yes, of course Lexis and Westlaw provide digital copies of case reporters.
My point is that you don't have to pay Lexis and West just to get copies cases that are published digitally. You may have to do more leg work, but you don't have to pay Lexis or West.
I think Mr. Foster's use of the term "rent seeking" makes it clear that he is the one who misunderstands the situation. It implies that through some collusion with the court system, Lexis and Westlaw have made themselves the sole source of getting public domain information. This is the sense in which I was using the "charge for access to cases" because this is the sense implied by the term "rent seeking."
But charging for their copy of a public document is not "rent seeking," nor is it "rent seeking" to build a value-added service on top of publicly available information. Indeed, that's pretty much Google's business model--to make money categorizing information they don't own. I don't think anyone would accuse Google of rent-seeking if they e.g. showed ads associated with cached copies of a page.
In the context of pre-digital cases, why should "freely available" be coincident with "download[able] for free?" Back then, "freely available" meant putting a paper copy in a public law library (of which there are many). Going back and digitizing those reports, then charging for access to the digital copies is a value-added service, not "rent seeking."
My point is that you don't have to pay Lexis and West just to get copies cases that are published digitally. You may have to do more leg work, but you don't have to pay Lexis or West.
I think Mr. Foster's use of the term "rent seeking" makes it clear that he is the one who misunderstands the situation. It implies that through some collusion with the court system, Lexis and Westlaw have made themselves the sole source of getting public domain information. This is the sense in which I was using the "charge for access to cases" because this is the sense implied by the term "rent seeking."
But charging for their copy of a public document is not "rent seeking," nor is it "rent seeking" to build a value-added service on top of publicly available information. Indeed, that's pretty much Google's business model--to make money categorizing information they don't own. I don't think anyone would accuse Google of rent-seeking if they e.g. showed ads associated with cached copies of a page.
In the context of pre-digital cases, why should "freely available" be coincident with "download[able] for free?" Back then, "freely available" meant putting a paper copy in a public law library (of which there are many). Going back and digitizing those reports, then charging for access to the digital copies is a value-added service, not "rent seeking."